Adam Conover

If the thing you said wasn't actually funny, then you just did say something weird and everyone's like, why did you say that? Right? Hello, my name is Adam Conover. I'm a comedian and I'm the host of the new show The G Word, out now on Netflix. Hello, Hello, gentle listeners, and welcome back to another episode of Off the Beat with Me Here now your host Brian Baumgartner my guest today because a genius, or at least a

true comedy genius, Mr Adam Conover. Now you may know him from shows like Adam Ruins Everything or The G Word on Netflix, where he has continued to bring his unique brand of comedy, which is basically ruining everything we love to the masses. Unlike many in the business, Adam he doesn't shy away from the hard topics because at the end of the day, he not only wants to make us laugh, he wants to make us think. And I can safely say that his jokes would have probably

gone over Kevin Malone's head. But I, Brian Baumgartner, I I'm a big fan and I can't wait for you to get to know him like well like I do. This was such a fun chat. Let's get it going, Mr Adam conover, Bubble and squeak. I love it. Bubble and squeak, Bubble and squeaker, cooking at every moment, left over from the nut befole. What's up, Adam? Hi, Brian, how's it going. It's going all right. How are you? I'm doing great. It's wonderful to be here. Thank you

so much for joining me. Now. I don't know if you're aware of this or not. I was given an opportunity to work with you on your show. Adam ruins everything. No, waituh, tell me more and I'll and let's see if it. If it jogs something loose, well I will tell you I was I did not know your show. Of course I had heard of it, I had not watched it,

and I was asked to do your show. It was about the t S. That's what I remember, and it made me deep dive into watching your show because I was like, well, I gotta find out what this about. Ultimately we could not work it out. I don't know I was in out of the country or something, but anyway, I have been a fan of yours ever since then. I don't know who you eventually got to get cast, but I'm sure they don't remember either my memory of that.

So we on Adam Ruins everything. We used to go out to special guest stars all the time and try to get you know, recognizable, incredible comedic actors such as yourself, and let me tell you something, it rarely worked, especially because that first that that t S A episode is in our first year, so we hadn't aired on True TV yet. We had only been on YouTube. So I wouldn't blame anybody in Hollywood to say, what is this true TV show? I gotta show up at six am

four and they don't have any trailers. We didn't have talent trailers our first year. We were really shoestring, so you know, maybe better for you that you didn't make it. And know all right, well, I was aware because I had done some work in the past with college humor. Yeah,

which is obviously where the show started. But before we get into all of that, Adam is here with us, and I wanted to go back to your childhood a little bit and maybe investigate how you came to be you and there by your character, which I really want to talk to you about. I've I've heard some interviews with you describing Adam, so I want to talk about that a little bit. But you were grew up in Smithtown, New York? Is that right? That is? I think that's

actually my place of birth. Okay. I grew up in a town called uh in two towns Port, jeff Station, and then Waiting River on Long Island, Smith Downs, not far far, not far away. I think that's just where the hospital is. All right, Well, that makes sense. A family full of PhD s. It's been said you're the only one in your family without a PhD. Is that is that right? That is true? My uh dad? This is I'm not going to recite a stand up joke. My dad's a marine biologists. My mom is a botanist,

my sister is a nuclear physicist. I'm here talking to you right now. Do you think that that intellectual curiosity, though that existed clearly in your Do you think that that influenced your your comedic style? Absolutely? It did, Absolutely it did. I mean in a number of different ways. Um. Number one is that growing up, we watched a lot of educational television. We watched a ton of PBS and uh, you know, there's there was kind of a golden age

of science on television. And then in the you know, late eighties, early nineties two and you had shows like Bill Nye's Show. There's a show called Beatman's World. There was a whole bunch of great stuff on on PBS like three two one, Contact and Square TV. And so

I loved all those shows. And I didn't actually realize until two or three years into making Adam Ruins everything that I had kind of reproduced that same format or updated it of you know, this very animated host telling you things with you know, lots of comedy and lots of sound effects and visual effects. Um, And I realized, oh, that's why kids gravitated towards my show, like I never

thought that we'd have a fan base of kids. The show was on at ten thirty at night at on Tuesdays, but very quickly kids started really watching and falling in love with the show, and I realized that has something to do with it. But then, yeah, apart from that, I was just always trying to live up to the family business, you know, learning more about the world and communicating it to people. My sister actually went into science communication.

She's now a science reporter, a physics reporter for Science News magazine. So we're kind of in closer lines of work than I would have expected, where we're both communicating with the public about research and facts and interesting things. Right when did you realize that you had an interest in performing? Was that early on for you? Oh? Man, Yeah,

it was. I remember there being some not even school play, just some kind of class presentation for some class in like sixth grade, and I made up like a funny little care stor of like a real estate act agent with like a funny miscellaneous European accent for it. I don't remember why or what the context was, but and I did. I had like a catch phrase, and the catch phrase was hi ya hia hia, you want to

buy a house. I don't remember what what that was supposed to mean, Like what the context of this was. I have no idea what the context of it was. But I remember kids coming up to me in on like the playground afterwards asking me to do the line that they had seen me do in class. They wanted me to do it again. This is my first time ever telling this story. It's a very deep memory of mine, and I remember really liking that they wanted me to do the line, and so, yeah, I did you know,

I did theater in high school stuff like that. Actually, let me back up a second, because I was also diagnosed with a d D as a kid, and I was a very impulsive, shouting out kind of kid. I was always you know, like, you know, messing up in social situations and like being disruptive in class, and so I was yelled at a lot as a kid and so and told to shut up and be quiet, and

a lot of that went into me too. So I did do theater in high school, but then by the time I got to college and it kind of been beating out of me, and I was like, I don't know if I liked performing, like I'm not sure it's for me. And then my friends created a sketch comedy group and I knew I wanted to join the group. I joined and I started writing sketches. But for the first year I didn't perform because I was like, no,

that's not that's not what I do. I'll just be behind the scenes and all right stuff, until I finally figured out that like I liked, I really loved performing, you know. Yeah, so I'm assuming you're referring to Old English. This is the name of the sketch comedy group, correct, I mean, it doesn't get more intellectual sounding than that. Um, I guess, except we were named after the malt liquor bran. That is true, that is, I mean, that is what we like to drink. At Bard College, was was forty

ounce bottles. It's an expensive school, so you gotta save your money where you can. My my image was totally different, like, oh, the nerds at Bard College coming up with oh English, it sounds like Renfair's exactly what I thought. Um, so you started just writing yeah. I mean a lot of the other people in the group were also doing improv. Like the thing had happened where one of the members

of the group. You know, in between semesters during the summer, had spent a summer in New York City and took like two UCB classes and then came back and taught the rest of the group. No, no, no, we're not doing whose lines anyway style improv anymore. We're doing the Herald.

We're doing long form improv. And then proceeded to like, you know, do the worst long form improv you've ever seen, which is a story so many college sketch groups, some improv groups, I'm sure, but I didn't join the improv side of it because I was like, no, no, no, I don't want to sort of be out there and and you know, et cetera. I had, like a I had a fear of working that way. I guess, yeah,

there's a thing as a comedian. I realized where you kind of have to just like say stuff randomly when you're in comedy, you know what I mean, You have to like your mouth lead. If it occurs to you to say something, you just kind of have to start saying it and then hope that by the time the sentences over you've come up with a punchline. You sort of like, I just need to embrace that, and that

means that sometimes you end up annoying people. If the thing you said wasn't actually funny, then you just did say something weird and everyone's like, why did you say that? Right? So, as a kid, I was saying stuff like that all the time. You know, I was just constantly whatever I thought came into my head. And that was specifically what I was like yelled at and chastised over, was like why are you why did you sit think before you speak?

Why are you spulsive? Yeah? And and so for that reason, I never felt comfortable doing improv, and even when it came to like sketch performing, I was like nervous about it um And it took me years to sort of break myself of that until you know, I became a comfortable performer again. And then when I did I I finally I felt it solved a lot of issues for me, Like really diving into stand up comedy and live performance like cured me of a lot of social awkwardness and

things like that. I'm bighead a little BITO. I don't know if you're trying to go chronologically interesting, No, I think that's fascinating. So in what way, did did that help you? Well? So, throughout my college years, in high school years as well, but also my early twenties, I kind of felt very socially awkward. I felt like, I'm I'm different from other people. When I talked to them, They're like, who is this weirdo? I'm not good at parties.

You know, everyone can tell there's something sort of wrong with me, and I should really spend my time alone inside playing video games or I remember specifically, Uh, I liked the very very early years of online dating because I was like, I'm better online than in person. I like to send chats, you know, I had that kind of stuff. I can control that situation at a bar. I'm a little bit confused, you know. UM and I and I had had basically what i'd call now social anxiety.

Uh So, let's let's fast forward a little bit. I have a college sketch group. We all moved to New York City. We did sketch comedy there with some success. We were making videos for some website eights and things like that. For a couple of years. We had live shows at U C B and e'll swhere. Then the group broke up and I was like Okay, I want to keep doing comedy. I need to, you know, I want to keep having this feeling of getting laughs and it's the best feeling in the world. And how do

I do that? So I started doing improv and stand up simultaneously at U c B and also just doing open mics around New York. And I did um open mics for oh, you know, eight years or something like that. You have to do open mics for a long time. And by the end of me doing that, by the time I was a stand up comic, it cured me of my social anxiety because stand up is like intensely social. Like you go to the open mic, you go to

the show, and you see all the other comics. Hey, how are you doing, how you good to see you, blah blah blah blah blah. You know, you're sort of being chippy with them, tossing you know whatever, just tossing lines back and forth and just sort of being in this kind of social soup. You know, you're just you go and you give everybody like a quick backslap hug, and you know, then you go up there and you're just in it. And but after I've done it for like five or six years, I started to wait, I

don't feel awkward in social situations anymore. Now I feel like the most comfortable person here. I'm the person at the party who makes other people feel at east because I'm so you know, just like, hey, how's it, what's up everybody? You know, um, just sort of like fluidly moving in this situation. It's one of the reasons why I try to encourage people to do stand up. You know,

people have a fear of stand up, uh improv. Now there's a culture of people taking a level zero improv class even if they have no intention to performing, just sort of like for fun, you know, to get out of their shell or whatever. When no one does have for stand up and I kind of wish there was, because it's so many people's greatest fear is to go stand up in front of other people and be exposed to them. When it's just you and a microphone and

those eyes are looking at you, you're totally exposed. You know, they can see the truth about you no matter what you do. They can see if you're nervous, they can tell if you're overconfident. They can you know, if you say something that isn't funny, then everybody knows it wasn't funny. That kind of exposure is very frightening to people. So a lot of people, oh, I could never ever do stand up. I could never do it, and I was

accursed as people. Just give it a try, go a couple of the mics, like, yeah, it's gonna suck, You're gonna bomb. Sometimes you're gonna realize that it doesn't kill you. And you're also gonna have the experience of getting a laugh, because everybody can get a laugh at some point in their first couple of times, and you'll know what that's like. And if you do it over and over again, then you're you're doing stand up. You might not be good at it yet, but you're you're a comic if you

want to try it. I do try to encourage people to do that. Right. Did you consider yourself more at this point a stand up comedian or an improv guy? I don't even know what that means. Well, at that time I was doing stand up and improv simultaneously, and after about three years of doing both, I realized, oh, I'm a stand up guy, Like because I would. I took all the improv classes. I got to the advanced levels.

I was in an independent group. We had practice sessions, you know, I was doing improv, and I realized, you know what, I still don't want to step off the back line, like when when a scene is happening, I still feel like, I hope I don't need to tag in because I'm not comfortable with it. And what I realized is is I really like being funny and thinking on my feet. But as myself, I enjoy just being there with the audience. Hey, all of us are in

the same room together. What's happening over there? You know? Oh my god, someone dropped a plate. Let's talk about it. That sort of thing as opposed to having to think on my feet as another person as a character, was not my way of being funny. And so I, respectfully, with with great respect for improv, stopped doing it and did not regret it. Okay, well, it's fascinating. It was almost as though you knew what direction my question was going.

So yeah, So in improv, right, you are you're you're essentially it is a series of characters that you're creating with stand up, and that was what I was going to ask you, Like it is you and but to what degree is that a character as well, or do you consider it that it's you? That is such a good question, I would say, other comics might disagree. I would say it's not a character, uh, but it is a constant struggle to create a stage persona that feels

as much like yourself as possible. So you do create to a certain extent of stage persona, but to me, it doesn't feel like putting on a costume or a change of clothes. It feels like just accentuating a party yourself, or finding a part of yourself, accessing a part of yourself and bringing that onto stage. And the hard part is accessing it in a way that feels natural. So what I always tell people about stand up is that everyone,

almost everyone. I wouldn't say everyone has had the experience of being funny to their friends, right, telling a funny story at a party. Most most people, almost every Probably probably a couple of people are such dead fish they've never told a funny story. But everyone's at the experience of laughing with friends. Right. The trick is of stand up figuring out how to be that version of yourself.

You're not always that version of yourself, right, Sometimes you're at home and you're sleeping, you're watching TV, and you don't want to tell a funny story right now. But sometimes at other times your your party self, where you're up and your energized. And so how do you access that part of yourself on demand whenever you want, whenever you need to go on stage, no matter how you feel,

You've got to access that part of yourself. So the trick of stand up is having a conversation with the audience that feels natural, even though it's a one sided conversation. It's a conversation where one party never speaks the audience right, all they do is laugh. It's against the rules for them to talk. They get yelled at if they talk. You know my case, I'm on tour right now. I'm going to be Emboston this weekend and I'm going to

be on stage talking for an hour straight. And I need to make that feel like a natural conversation rather than a speech or a lecture or something like that. And so that's the challenge is accessing who you naturally are. What I really want to do is I want to give people access to that, to that real self that I have. That's how I think about it. Yeah. Interesting.

I do find that that fascinating, that idea, and I think that you're right in general, you know, unless you're uh, you know, a comic who is very specifically playing a character Larry the Cable Guy, for example, is not that's not his name, that's not his name. Yeah, But but for you finding a perspective which I think ultimately makes then your comedy more personal or at least appear more

personal to you and who you are. So you start working for College Humor as at least a staff member in now, is that your first experience posting things or had you? Had you been on posting things on the site before you went to work with them? That was my That was my first experience posting anything on College Humor. I had posted things to other websites in the past, but never the College Humor until I started working there, and and by that time I had had been doing

standard for a couple of years. When I was working there. Yeah, why did you decide to join them? Was there something specific about them and what they were doing that interested you? Or yeah? I mean it was first of all, was it was one of the only comedy jobs in New York City that I felt that I could get. You know, there were also you know, there's Late Night and SNL and stuff like that, but those are the most rarefied

jobs in the world. You know. It isn't like, you know, in l A there are sort of these low level comedy jobs, you know, you could write for, you know, an award show or something like that. In New York it's like those big shows or nothing. And so College Humor was like one of the only places that was actually employing comedy writers. And I had actually just worked

my first writer's guilt job I had. I had written for a v H one sketch show that aired in eleven that I honestly did not have a great experience at. And I was like, I don't want to move to l A. And I was like, no, I want to stay in New York. And I happened to email a friend of mine who worked at College Humor and was like, are you guys looking for writers? And that's a question that almost never gets a yes, Like you don't don't

even really send emails like that. You know, people was gonna send me an email are you looking for writers? And I'm like, no, I hire writers. For like two weeks once every three years, you know, like I've never looked these slots never come up. But I had emailed him and and he had right at that moment, decided I'm gonna quit my job, and he recommended me to his boss. Later, my boss Sam Rich and said, you know, hey,

this is this guy's good. We should we should hire him because he had been a fan of mine, UM, which is like one of the biggest favors anyone's ever done me. It really was a kickstart to my my career. But yeah, I mean College Humor was really a comedy writer's paradise in those days, because you know, you got a middle class New York City income. I had health insurance, you know what I mean. It was a it was an office job, um, which was good to be able

to have the health insurance and the stability. But then my entire job was to write two comedy sketches a week, and they could kind of be whatever I wanted them to be, Like it really was funny first, what makes us laugh in the room, Let's make that, and they made them. And also as a writer, you got to sort of produce the episode, like or produce the sketch.

You didn't like have to do any of the production production work, but you talked with the director, you could go be on set um, you could supervise the edit and give notes on it. And so you know, it was a huge benefit to my writing to have to actually be out putting, you know, two sketches a week, and then one of them would get made and then would gets to post it on YouTube and see how it did. And uh that eventually, you know, is what

led to Adam Ruins. Everything was I hadn't ruins Everything was originally a comedy sketch that I had written, a college humor. Yeah. By the way, I worked with Sam Rich on a project that I did a college humor as well. I always had a great experience with those guys, and my experience was that yeah, yeah, like you said, there was there was a total creative freedom to to explore just what what you as long as it made other people laugh there. Yeah, you were given the opportunity

to do it. Yeah, it's incredible. It was a strange moment in time because the reason we had that freedom was because you know, College Humor was owned by Barry Dealer's i a C giant media company, and he had decided, Hey, for the next couple of years, I'm gonna bank roll this and see what we can turn it into. And you know, so we got to basically operate as at a loss for years and then finally, you know, Facebook eight the entire you know, online media business and killed

it purposefully. They did it. I've talked about that publicly before and uh, you know, Dealer said okay, well that's enough of that and pulled the plug. And you know, now they're they're soldiering on as a as a subscription service called Dropout, which is doing really well. But that's sort of like golden era of online comedy. Just it was a blip, you know, and it'll it'll unfortunately seemingly never happened again. Yeah, but there were some amazing thing

things that came out of it. One that I must mention the Mitt Romney style based on this Gangham Scott style. Thank you for mentioning that it currently has over sixty five million views. Still, were there any other specific sketches that that bring you fond memories of your time they're at college humor? I mean, let me just talk about Mitt Romney style for a second, because that was such a massive hit, and I wrote that with my colleague

Emily Oxford. We wrote it together. Um, but I did the voice of Mitt Romney um in the in the Mitt Romney rap. And that was ten years ago now, which is really bizarre to think about. But if you think, you know that's when Gandam style was huge ten years ago, it's a decade old. Uh. Also of course dates to the presidential election. But it was literally just I was obsessed with Gngham style. I loved Gngham style, and I think my girlfriend Lisa said I was trying and she

was like, what about Mitt Romney style? And I was like, oh, that's perfect and I and we wrote it all up. It fit perfectly. The Ganga style is a song and you can tell you if you want to speak Korean, it's a song about wealth and about you know, like celebrating this ostentatious kind of dorky wealth. So it works

perfectly from it Romney. But it was an absolute like sensation and we worked in you know Thetcent line that you know, his famous gaff and it was produced the whole thing is wish up by Vincent Pone, who's a wonderful director, and it was like, really, he produced the hell out of it. It's beautiful. It like mimics shot for shot GNGA style. It cost tens of thousands of dollars to make. Not in a million years could you get that kind of money for a YouTube video anymore,

Never in a million years. And so it's something that I'm still like weirdly proud of, despite it being the most dated piece of content. I still go watch it. I'm like, we fucking nailed it with this. Uh, they're as well. You created as a pitch in the room, Adam ruins everything where you debunk common misconceptions and reveal sometimes awful truth about the things that people love. How did you first come up with this idea? I had been doing in my stand up, this routine about the

Beers and the diamond engagement ring. Just years before this, I had read an article about how the diamond engagement ring was a marketing creation by the De Beers Corporation and that you know, just eventually became part of our culture, even though it was just something that they shoved into ads to make you think you had to buy a diamond engagement ring. And it had blown my mind when

I learned at I did. I was just remembered it, and I eventually wrote a stand up joke about it where I explained that to people, and I noticed they started reacting more than they did just to my jokes. You know, when you're when you're in the trenches doing stand up every night in bar basements and you know, back rooms. After a while, you get pretty good at making people laugh, and the challenge becomes, well, what do

I do after that? After I make them laugh? How do I you know, what do I do that makes them remember me? That makes them want to come to my next show? And I realized, oh, if when I tell them this information they sort of leaned forward as they get a little bit curious, they want to hear more. So I started working more and more material like that. In my accident, I had to write two sketches a week of College Humor, and I said, well, all right,

let me write this up as a sketch. But what I did was I had previously written monologue style sketches before while I was explaining something to the audience, but they never got greenlit. And I remember the other writers being kind of like, this is kind of didactic. You know, you're kind of ranting on and on about this. You know,

it's not that likable. And so what I did was Emily and Murph, two of my coworkers, fellow writers of college humor, I just wrote them into the script making fun of me for saying this stuff, you know, like, oh my god, why are you telling us this is so annoying? We're trying to I'm proposing to my girlfriend here, man, why you gotta bust in and tell me all this ship about the diamond engagement ring. And that ended up

being the comedic engine of the entire series. Was you know, people people chastising me for saying the thing, which, by the way, fits very well with what I'm I told you earlier. You know, as a kid, I was constantly chastised for blurting things out, for saying more than I should have. And so really what I was doing and Adam Ruins everything was turning my childhood pain and this thing that I was here as a kid into comedy.

Um I was. I was accessing that previous version of myself, that child that you know, Adam ruins everything, that character version of myself is often I think of based on myself as a kid. Um not able to understand social cues, um not able to understand when people want you to leave. Like it's a little bit high voiced, you know, it's it's a little bit the pee wee Herman version of me. Okay, so that's sort of where all those themes come together. Right,

But unlike your stand up, is that a character? Do you consider that more of a character? I do? I do? Yes, No, Adam Ruins everything that is a character. I mean, it has my name, but you know, we developed that special hairstyle for that character. I have. It was my real hair, right, but we made it taller, We made it this big sort of three dimensional quaff and you know, the specific way of dressing where where I dressed very self consciously nerdy,

you know, sort of way too much of men'swear. And so you know, there's there's elements that match my real life and elements that don't. But yeah, that was a

character version of me. Right, it occurs to me. You talked about it it returning back to some of the stuff that you watched as a kid, Bill Night, the science Guy, that's sort of high energy it relating to kids, but it's also when you think about today's you know, media style, fast, funny, accessible, and able to tell a full story in well a relatively small amount of time, a happy accident that it sort of begins to fit into what's popular in media today, or or was that

intentionally drawn that way? And I hope that we helped make media that way, you know, I hope that we helped bend that curve. I mean, I I really wanted to create something that was very information dense because I hated nonfiction television where or documentary television where they take so long to tell you anything, where it's just drawn out.

I want to give me the information quickly. So we would pack you know, these entire stories into seven minutes that would hopefully, you know, we we try, we try to have three stories that blow your mind plus a conclusion every single episode, and every episode was you know, twenty three minutes long or whatever. I could get the exact runtime twenty one thirty maybe, and so that, you know, the show had to move quickly. And then we wanted to pack in jokes and pack in visuals and you know,

we want to throw the kitchen sink in there. I mean, when when we created the show, I was like, this is my one shot. You know, I'm lucky to get a pilot. I'm a sketchwriter at a at a at a website. This is my shot to like make a series, and all I want is one season. That's all that matters. Um. And so I was like, I gotta pack everything in there that I can. UM. You know, there's no holding back. Every moment needs to be funny, every moment needs to

be visual. Nothing is just static straight to camera. It's almotion all the time. And you know, I think a lot of that came from anxiety, and maybe it was a little bit too much. UM. But I also think it's helps. It helps. It's what drew people to the show, and it's what made it memorable for people. So what made it also work on TV and on YouTube? You know, one segment from every episode was posted on YouTube made a big difference. A lot of people still think that

I was just a YouTuber. Um. They didn't realize that it was a television show as well, that they've only seen a third of it, that there's like more segments on HBO Max that they could go watch right now, right. What thing did you debunk that you're the most proud of. Oh, that I'm the most proud of. Uh, that's a really good question. I think the ones that I'm most proud of are the segments about the criminal justice system, of

which we did many. Um. We did an episode called Adam Ruins Forensic Science about how polygraph tests don't work and fingerprints don't work and I witness testimony is like deeply flawed. Um. We did Adam Ruins Justice, which is about you know, how people can't get a fair trial and about how public defenders are disadvantaged over you know, district attorneys, um. And this leads to people being sent

to jail when they shouldn't be. And then we did Adam Ruins Prison, which is all about you know, the prison industrial complex and mass incarceration and you know, I mean these issues. To me, mass incarceration is like next

to climate change, It's our greatest national sin. Like this is what we're gonna be looking back on a hundred years from now going, can you believe that we did this to each other, That we you know, imprisoned more people than anyone else on earth, that that you know, most the majority of people alive on earth today who are in prisons are in American prisons. UM. And We're the wealthiest country in the world. We're just locking each other up for having you know, an eighth of weed

in in in our pockets. Um, it's unconsfordable. And so the fact that we did multiple episodes about that and I got to meet for It's like Darryl Atkinson, who is formally incarcerated man himself, became a civil rights attorney, got his law degree and now works to get other people who are wrongfully imprisoned out of prison, and he's working to reform the criminal justice system. Like, oh, that is the most important thing to me. And yeah, I'm

really really proud of that work. Yeah, I remember I became aware of those episodes right around the time that the you know, the sort of documentary focusing on a crime thing start happening. Making of a Murderer and well they're staircase and the idea that we we think about eye witness testimony especially or even some forensic evidence you think,

is you know, infallible. And you know, I think you, you know, I don't know, have taught me something but really begin to give a different perspective to people, which I think is is really cool and ultimately important. Thank you. I mean Yeah, I'm really proud to be able to do that. And it's true that, you know, the true crime field overall is just rife with misinformation about the

criminal justice system. You know that it's the structure of it is sort of you want to say, Okay, the the purpose caught in an interesting way, and so forensic science often comes into it. And unfortunately, like forensic science, the vast majority of it is not scientific period um. And unfortunately, the main function of our criminal justice system is to is to lock up people who shouldn't be

locked up. Oh, sorry to tell you that. You know, Um, the the individual stories of the you know, diabolical you know, rare serial killer murders that are solved by sub detective. It's not like they don't happen, but they're like the the outlier of all outliers in terms of what the criminal justice system is. The criminal justice system is about, you know, roughing up and incarcerating people of color. That's what it's for. That's what it does. That's what it does,

like on a on a massive level. And um, and you know a lot of these techniques that they that the cops come up with, things like from the manual that they use to interrogate prisoners, you know, has been called a manual for false confessions, you know, for producing false confessions, because it's this way of like browbeating people

until they say whatever you want them to say. Um. You know, it's just like these are techniques that that cops used too, you know, be able to pin the blame on someone who they found in the vicinity rather than a scientific method that they used to figure out who actually did it. Unfortunately, that is like the practice of our criminal system system works, and just being able to like share that with people on cable television was

was really meaningful to me. And it's not like we were able to change those practices just by exposing them, but being able to spread the word was really mattered to me. And it's still works that I continue to do. What episode had the most surprising backlash? Oh, the most

surprising backlash? Good question. Um. I mean I would always hear from people who were personally involved in the industries we would cover, Um, like, we did an episode about death, and we did an episode about the funeral home industry and how what a racket it is, and you know, people who work in funeral homes were like Hey, we were nice. We try our best. You don't don't tell

us were bad. Um, Like, no, I'm not saying you individually are bad, but you like work in an industry that's like full of scams, and you know it's like sort of designed to scam people. Sorry, it's like you know, we've compared to them a car salesman. Right, everyone knows car salesman or scammy funeral home people are just as scammy. Doesn't mean that every single car salesman's a piece of ship, but it does mean, like, you know, don't trust the car salesman. Um, so we would get a lot like that.

You know, sometimes we get weird backlash. We did an episode about Lexotica the glasses monopoly and how they check up the prices if I wear for everybody, and Laxotica didn't hassle us, but the Huffington's Post wrote an article about our episode, and Luxotica sent like a season assist to the Huffington's Post, which makes no sense. They didn't change anything because that any post is like, well, this is all true and it's like covered in it is

like journalism. Like everything I do like I'm getting it from journalism right, I'm I'm I'm just repeating what's in newspapers, what's in scientific studies. You know, I don't do anything that isn't fully backed by the research, so I always have really strong grounds to stand on. So there there isn't much that they can say. They just got like kind of cranky at the Huffington Post. I guess, um. Oh. The one that got the most surprising backlash was we

did uh uh. We did a segment on alpha males about how the idea that you see on the internet there's alpha males and there's beta males, and you gotta be an alpha. You don't wanta be a beta. This is beta behavior like that kind of thing. It's all bullshit. It's not scientific at all. There's not two types of men out there. It's not part of science, right, Do I even need to say this. It's like astrology, you know, it's just like a literary way of understanding people that's

not based in anything. It's also not based you know, in wolf packs, which is what it comes from. The guy who coined the idea of there being alpha's and betas and wolf packs eventually retracted it because he realized he was just looking at parents that like the wolves don't like choose an alpha or whatever. It's not based on behavior. It's just the dad of the wolf pack is like bosses everybody around you know, so and so

does the mom. Uh So. Anyway, we did a pretty straightforward segment on this, and I just was swarned by so many dudes online being like beta, you're a beta And I'm like, no, that's not an insult to me. Is that doesn't exist? Like it's not real. It's like someone said, like it's like I'm like, yeah, unicorns didn't exist. And then they're like your unicorn. I'm like, no, I'm not. I said they don't exist. What are you talking about? Idiot?

That got that got a fair amount of meathead backlash, But you know, it was still fun to tell the story. You know, it was like kicking a hornet's nest sometimes you know you're doing it, you know, right, all right, here's one more. What was the biggest thing that was ruined for you by your staff or a researcher or a writer on the show where you were like, come on, I mean the one I always say is we just say went on the Olympics, and you know, I love

the Olympics. It's my favorite sporting event. But the Olympics itself is like the worst organization. It's one of the most corrupt organizations. It's bad for everybody, and it's bad

for the athletes who are not paying aid. We talked to an athlete who is literally living out of his car the same year that he wanted gold medal for the United States, you know, because they're they're not paid, nor can they use the fact that they're in the Olympics to like earn money from endorsements or things like that unless it's like approved by the Olympics. Michael Phelps is able to make money from being on the cover of the Wheati's box, but nobody else is. You know,

the fencers aren't making any money. They're paying their own way to go and be on NBC at two am. And uh. The cities where the Olympics are hosted are devastated by the Olympics because they build all this infrastructure

that's specific to the Olympics and is never used again. Um, which is why there's like a big movement of people, you know who who are against the Olympics coming to Los Angeles, for instance, because it's just like, you know, a huge money suck and it benefits nobody, but you know the developers and you know the crowds who come there for one weekend. Now, I'm still gonna go to the Olympics when it's in Los Angeles. Yours I am, because I you know, I love the sports, but the

structure that that creates them is terrible. Uh, it's bay s done a lie? You know. Do you have a new show now, The The g Word about the well the government? I hear it's it's loosely based on Michael lewis book The Fifth Risk Undoing Democracy. How how did you get involved with the series or did what was your pitch to do it? Well? So here's what happened. I had read the book The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis.

Michael Lewis is one of our very best journalists, one of the best, you know, narrative writers that we have, narrative nonfiction writers. I had read the book. I loved the book, and I had said, you know, oh my gosh, I would love to do some of these stories on television if I have a chance. Adam ruins everything at this and had been canceled as a result of the A. T and T Time Warner merger. We were one of

the most popular shows on True TV. But you know, this merger went through and they literally fired everybody from True TV, just like happens after every kind of corporate merger, right, there's huge layoffs. Stay in this case, acts the entire network and then put it all under t BS and t n T had those executives run it, and those executives started canceling all the shows until they finally canceled Mine Juny. But I was like, all right, I'm looking

for a new TV project. I read this book. I'm like, oh, this would be fun to do on TV. Sometime about six months later, my manager calls me and says, hey, so, I don't know if you'd be interested in this. Barack and Michelle Obama's company Higher Ground have optioned the rights to this book, The Fifth Risk. Do you want to go pitch on it? And I was like, the book that I just read and loved, Yes, I would like

to go pitch on it. And my pitch was essentially by the way I did not pitch the Obama's I pitched the people who worked for the people who work for Obama, but I I pitched them. You know, well, hey, I'll do it in my sort of very visual, you know, nonfiction investigative investigative journalism style, and we'll you know, we'll do somewhat like Adam Ruins Everything type segments that are

scripted in a visual sketch comedy world. But then I'll also go to the places meet the incredible government workers or people affected by things the government does not so well and meet them. And uh, they liked it. They been it, and we you know, they have a big deal with Netflix, So we did that Netflix and we uh spent the last three years working on that show. It's been about three years exactly since we first pitched it. But uh, and we were delayed because of COVID. That's

part of why it took so long. It would have only taken two years probably if not for COVID. Uh. But yeah, it was pretty it was pretty wild, but you know for the show. The show came out in May and is available on Netflix now. People want to check it out. It's a documentary series about how the government works. All in all, it's fast, it's both good and bad. It's me trying to figure out for myself, what exactly is the United States government? What can we

say about it? And Um Penn and teller guest star. Uh, there's I fly through a hurricane with the Air Forces Hurricane Hunters. We visit a car Gild beef processing facility to see how the U s d A does their work. It was a really remarkable experience and I'm very proud of the show. I hope folks can check it out.

Oh that's awesome. Yeah, it's it's fascinating to me. And again, you do use your unique brand of humor, but I think with the segments where you're actually going to the places and talking to real people, I think that there's it adds an additional level of humanity to you and to the work that I find really pleasurable as well. So congratulations on that, Um, thank you for saying so. And you've got to work with Oscar Nonaz I saw so I know, I know he is a big fan

of yours and uh, and that that's really fun. Oh. He had he had been also on Adam Ruins Everything, Um in one of our first season episodes and it was called Adam Ruins Work and he was so fun to work with. He puts his all into everything. Again This is our We had not even been on the air yet. In This is Like, he came and joined us on set and put his all into this character

on this on this dumb basic cable show. Uh. And so of course we wanted to bring him back for the new show, where he plays a very harried FEMA agent who is really really destroyed by bureaucracy. And he's just so funny in such a pleasure to work with and great guy. Um, I was gonna say that, yeah, big, just speaking about the character of the show. One of my big goals for this show was to drop the character for an ruins everything and instead just be myself

on camera and this show it's just me. Hey, it's me Adam Conover. I'm talking directly to you the audience. Aren't you curious about this? I've always wondered that, like, aren't you mad about this? I'm angry about that. So it was really interesting because I started to feel to get the sense that I was like acting but as myself,

like I'm like trying to summon my own reactions. Okay, I need to be angry in this scene, but it's my own anger about how the federal government let down, you know, American citizens of Puerto Rico when it lets so many of them die after Hurricane Maria. I just summon that anger back again, so it's still there. It's funny because there's acting, but it's it's me as myself, you know. It's it was a really fascinating process to

work that way. So in a way, returning to your stand up roots and trying to find a heightened version of yourself that you can summon anger or sadness or despair or comedy. Yeah, it's interesting, exactly right. Um, all right, I want to play a game with you, rapid fire game. I'm calling this Adam ruins things in a rapid fireway. That's the name of this new game. All right, as quickly as cuminly possible. I want you to tear the following things apart from people already. AI oh ai is

fake man, it's not real. It's not our I mean, look, the algorithms do their thing, but they're not artificially intelligent, alright, like we we need to stop calling them artificially intelligent. It's like calling a regular car a flying car. You know it. It goes from place to place, but it cannot fly, you know, artificial intelligence, These are just algorithms that you know, sucking data on one end and spit out output on the other end, and we need to

need to start looking at them that way. So like the you know, the chat bot cannot think, right, it's just outputting text and you are acting as though it can think. Your self driving car cannot really drive itself. Um has a very limited number of self driving features. Don't take your hands off the fucking wheel. So the big problem with artificial intelligence is people believe in it too much, and as a result, they crash into barriers and die, and they start to fall in love with

a dumbass algorithm that Google gave them. So that wasn't that rapid fire. But comedians, comedians, my god, Well could I just say that, like we have an inflated opinion of ourselves, Like we're just fucking comedians, like something. I'm really sick of hearing a comedians go Like I literally heard this is a quote from I think Chris Rocky was like, we don't have philosophers anymore. Comedians are our

new philosophers. What the Because he's talking about we have philosophers, there are philosophers, Chris, go to any university there are people studying philosophy. I talked to philosophers on my podcast. Factually, I interview philosophers all the time, and we talk about philosophy. Okay, comedians are just repeating dumbass ship that they hurt. They're not thinking about how do we know the world better,

how do we separate truthhood from falsehood? Most of the time they're just like repeating common wisdom in a way that makes people laugh. And that's fine, there's nothing wrong with that. But the amount of comedians who are like, yeah, I'm a philosopher. You ever think kids these days aren't as tough because they're not getting bullied anymore. It's like,

come on, that's your fucking philosophy. Is this old man bullshit that people have been repeating for decades, Like give me a like, have a little bit of humility about what it is that you're doing. You're just a guy who knows how to liver punch lines into a microphone or a gal. You know, why don't you just accept

that that's what you are? Or if you want to be a philosopher, start by reading some fucking Plato, know, like do something like read like reads some fucking Martha nous bound like engage with some philosophy if you want to call yourself a philosopher. Um either that or just you know, stick to dick jokes. Puppies. I mean this is a very easy one. Pure Bred puppies are. It's very bad for the puppies. If you get a if you want a particular breed of dog, you are hurting

the dogs. Uh. Dog breeding is bad for dogs. Dog breeds are not real. They change over time, and almost all dog breeds are getting worse because of inbreeding. The dogs have horrible health problems. And what you should really do is get any kind of what they call mixed breed, which when you hear mixed breed, it just means regular dog as opposed to a fucking genetic freak that some weirdo made in their backyard. That is like hurting the dog. You know, just get like now, don't just get any rescue.

You want to find one that is you know, get him as young as you can, when it's been fostered as great. There are a lot of really wonderful rescues that can hook you up with a dog like that. We got our dog from one of these rescues. Um. But you know, if you if you're like I gotta get a little labradodle puppy, you're setting yourself up for a miserable dog who's gonna make you and themselves unhappy. That's that's a pretty rough one. I'm sorry, No, I am gonna point I am going to point out that

our a laborate doodle is technically a mixed breed. But other than that, that's true, that's true. It's an example of how people it's technally a mixed breed because someone made up the breed recently, right, that's why they combined a labrador and a doodle. But that's what all fucking dog breeds are. Like the Labrador retriever itself has only existed since like the Victorian times. It's like the nineteenth century, right, it was it was created by someone else to like,

very few dog breeds are older than that. In fact, most of them were created during this vogue for fancy breeding, which was also the same time that eugenics was in. Like, people were just into genetic customization of creatures. And it's bad. Now there's there's some breeds there like much much older on that, like working breeds. But you know those are those are a little fewer and further between. All right, the office, your show the office, or the workplace, the office,

your show of the office. Yeah, okay, okay, I'm gonna go out on a on a limb here, all right, And and don't don't don't be mad at me, Brian, all right, but I have I actually have a real substantive criticism of this period of comedy, of cringe comedy. Is that okay? Is that okay to share? Sure, of course, And it's really a criticism of Ricky Gervais more than it is of Steve Carrell or because I am I am an American office partisan, alright, one of the greatest

shows in the history of television. Okay, criminal By the way, Steve Carrell never want an Emmy for that role. Can you believe that one of the one of the greatest comedic performances by an actor in American history by far?

Incredible character. But the general trend of cringe comedy that was pioneered by Ricky Gervais in the original Office, I think has aged very poorly because a common troope that you'll see is you'll see the white person in the scene, right, they will say something that is quote accidentally racist, and then the people of color in the scene will be like,

what did you say? Or they'll just cock their heads and look quizzically, and then the white person goes and Ricky Gervais had so many scenes like this, would go, oh no, no, that's not what i'mant No, no, no, that's no, no no, no, no, no, oh no, it's a little awkward. Isn't a little awkward that I said that thing that could be racist? But it's not really, you

know what I mean? And if you look at what was happening in comedy at the time, this is a time when the entire media industry was still controlled by white people. Right. All the writers of these shows were white, all the stars of these shows were white. But they had started to get the message, Oh wait, I shouldn't say like racist stuff. But what I've done instead is I've constructed a situation in which I do get to say the racist stuff on television, but the people of

color in the scene I don't get yelled at. They just go like, huh, like it's a little awkward. Oh, it's kind of cute. It's kind of funny, and then a white person has to backpedal and get out of it, and then nothing really bad happens to them because they said something like racist at work. Right in real life, when people say something racist at work, like it is hurtful, it harms people. You know, it's fucked up. It's not

like a cute, little awkward moment. But it was this way that like white people rewrote racism as being something, oh, it's just a little faux paw, rather than being like, you know, a systemic form of like exclusion from workplace environments, you know what I mean. And that's what I think of when I go back and look at the show. I'm not saying those scenes aren't funny, but I am saying, oh, we constructed this little fictional idea for ourselves of what

racism was, and that's never what it was. It was never about just like, oh, it's slightly awkward. It was it's something much more serious and fucked up. And I think there's a reason that people don't write comedy that works that way anymore. People don't write that kind of joke about cringe joke about racism that we were writing. And by the way, as I was a sketch comedy right at the time. I wrote jokes like that too, because that was what I was watching on television. I

thought that was funny. But you know, in the way that people say, comedy evolves and our tastes evolved, and we you know, I think comedy does get better over time. I think that's like an advance that we've made since that time. It's like, you know, not every joke on the Office is like that, But when I look, I'm like, oh, that's a joke that nobody would write today, because I think we kind of have a different view of those

things now. I don't. I'm really curious what you think of that, as being someone who was who is obviously on the show. Well, I think it's an interesting perspective. I think that how it was used on the show was to expose expose real ideas that quite frankly, since and maybe you would have an issue with this too, but really issues of race in network television comedy hadn't been dealt with at all since like all in the Family, which is like it just became like something that nobody

would talk about or deal with. And I think that what I was often tremendously proud about the show for doing. Despite taking your point about potentially being able to still say a funny joke that really, in reality you shouldn't say and don't have much consequences. I feel like people's individual racism where it was actually being talked about for the first time, like it was actually conversations that came

out of it about race. I mean speaking specifically about Diversity Day or gay witch hunt, which is not about race specifically, but it was actually talking about sexuality, actually talking about race and exposing people's ideas. And despite that it may just be a raised eyebrow, it was an entire group of sixteen people responding negatively to that comment, which is that you you can't say that, And I would argue that the joke, the laugh, more often than not,

came from the response as opposed to the joke. That's what I would say, Oh, oh, absolutely absolutely that you're

enjoying watching Michael Scott get yelled at um. And one of the reasons my one of the reasons I have the preference for the American Office is I think the American Office did did a good job of exactly what you're saying, where Ultimately, the characters who are responding are the characters who are right that the ones who are empathizing with And you know, Michael Scott really does get like browbeaten, you know, in a way. I think Gervais Office.

I think gervass work generally didn't do that to the same extent. You don't get the sense that like his word and I'm talking about his other you know, his other shows as well, didn't in my view, take those issues as seriously, you know, didn't like actually engage with like what is racism in the workplace or what what are these conversations at all? Um, Whereas I think the American Office actually went there and actually took the extra step.

So yeah, it's it's more of a criticism of that entire period of comedy that I have that not re show dealt with well. But I think you know, the American Office is one of the better ones, right, Um, I know you have to go factually, podcast, You've done an amazing number of episodes. You're continuing your work well, debunking things for people, but talking to as you say, philosophers and and different people, really examining all facets of life. And yeah, well You're able to do more right than

just the twenty three minutes on television. Yeah, absolutely, I mean so unfactually, I interview a different expert from around the world of human knowledge. You know, every episode we have philosophers on, we have scientists, we have journalists. Sometimes we're doing you know, current event based stories. Sometimes we're

just doing um, general knowledge. Like on the episode that's coming out, Um, I'm talking to uh See Brusatti, who's a paleontologist, and we talk about why the dinosaurs died out and you know, the birth of mammals and why mammals eventually took over the world, and it's just a

cool general fiance episode. Then we'll have on, you know, a constitutional scholar to talk about what's going on with you know, the overturning of Roe versus Wade, and what the constitution really is and how the Supreme Court really works, and try to get a deeper view of how our government works and and you know what, what what are the deep legal issues that go into the changes that

we're seeing today. So I like to be able to take, you know, a topic that people are talking about and access it in a in a deeper way than than we normally get on CNN our cable news, UM, and I really follow my own curiosity, you know, I asked these experts, Hey, this is what I'm curious about, like this, I want to figure this out, you know, help me understand um. And so it's incredibly rewarding to get to

do it. And we've got a really dedicated audience who tunes in, and uh, I hope, I hope people check it out. I'm I'm extremely proud of it. And it's a it's a lot of fun. If you love to laugh and you love to learn, come listen to the show. I am funny on the show, by the way, I do do my best and while we're talking about constitutional law, and still do a joke every now and again. Absolutely, congratulations on on the podcast, on the new show The

g Word, UM, such an interesting, interesting guy. I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me today, Adam. Thanks so much, and good luck. I will I promise you this I'll be watching. I really appreciate it so much. Brian. I've I've been a fit of years for you for years and so it's so wonderful to hear you say that, and and thank you for your if you're wonderfully informed questions. Not a lot of interviewers do their research like Brian baum Gardner does, so I think can't thank you enough.

Thank you so much, Adam, thank you so much for joining me. I am happy to report that you did not ruin this episode of Off the Beat. You might ruin everything, but you can't ruin me, my friend, not in the slightest. This was so much fun. Listeners, I'll talk to you next week for yet another episode of Off the Beat. I can't wait. Off the Beat is hosted an executive produced by me Brian Baumgartner, alongside our executive producer Langley. Our producers are Diego Tapia, Liz Hayes,

Hannah Harris, and Emily Carr. Our talent producer is Ryan Papa Zachary, and our intern is Sammy Cats. Our theme song Bubble and Squeak performed by my great friend Creed Bratton, and the episode was mixed by seth Olandski