Full transcript: Adam Carolla on London Real
2:37 Brian Rose: This is London Real, I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Adam Carolla, the actor, comedian, podcasting host, and bestselling author. Your career began some 30 years ago as a radio personality and co-host of the popular phone and show Love Line, which then moved to television on MTV. In 2009, you launched The Adam Carolla Show, which quickly became the number one podcast on iTunes and subsequently broke the Guinness World Record for the most downloaded of all time.
3:03 You’ve starred in, produced, and directed many films, appeared on Celebrity Apprentice and Dancing with the Stars, and continue to be one of the most popular figures on the stand-up comedy circuit. As an author, you published six books, most notably in 50 Years Will All Be Chicks, which debuted on the New York Times bestseller list. Your latest book, Everything Reminds Me of Something, gives readers a glimpse of your unique perspective on the world as an antidote to the politically correct woke times in which we now live.
3:30 Adam, welcome to London Real.
3:32 Adam Carolla: Thanks for having me.
3:34 Brian Rose: Hey, it’s great to have you here. I just want to say we started back in 2011 and you were like the king of podcasting at the time. inspirational to all the people that had never heard of podcasting over here in the UK and I was just curious like back then did you see podcasting as this new tech of the future or was it a way of just you having control of your own show or was it just fun I’m just kind of curious how that all started with you
4:06 Adam Carolla: I didn’t plot it out that precisely I had I worked in radio I got fired from my My last radio job in 2009, the station flipped formats, the economy turned down, and I was just out of a job.
4:20 And so I just went into podcasting, you know, directly from radio. And there wasn’t a business model attached to podcasting back in 2009. This is early February 2009. And um but I committed to do it every day and I didn’t get paid and it cost me a lot of money in bandwidth um back then because I guess bandwidth cost more back then and the show was popular so I used up a lot of bandwidth so I was paying about nine or ten thousand dollars a month in bandwidth and there was no income but I did it every day anyway and I had some sort of it wouldn’t be a belief or faith I just sort of had this sort of motivation it felt like the right thing to do I guess I guess is how I would describe it it didn’t really feel like a business it felt like maybe it could be a business but it just felt like the right thing to do for me
5:36 Brian Rose: and do you remember when it became a business was it like three years or four years later
5:44 Adam Carolla: no it it it happened and sort of dribs and drafts it first became apparent that we could use it as a tool to sell tickets to live events and appearances and things like that. So it became fairly immediately clear that, well, if you couldn’t make money directly from podcasting, you could make money indirectly from it by saying, I was going to be down at this club or at this theater on this date, and the tickets would sell very quickly. Later there became this Amazon affiliate program where people could click
6:31 On some link on Amazon and when they made an Amazon purchase, 1% of it would go toward you or something. So I guess the conceit was sort of like you like this podcast, you get it for free. It costs us money. Why don’t you just put us in your Amazon link and we’ll get whatever, you know, a half a percent or whatever of whatever you spend on Amazon or some version of that. Almost a little like a subscription, but it wasn’t really a subscription. And we started making like pretty good money just based on Amazon affiliate links. So now some money starting to come in from Amazon links, some money start to come on from doing live events.
7:27 And then at some point, some sponsors, you know, kind of people you’ve never heard of, who’ve never heard of started to kind of trickle in and people start going well you know if he’s got a big audience what’s the difference between a radio audience or podcast audience and then it turned out a lot of it was I think a lot of the beginning of stuff was like affiliate stuff where they would say you know flowers.com would come on during Valentine’s Day and go we’ll give you three bucks for every $25 bouquet you sell. And it was all super effective. We sold tons of bouquets, and we got paid that way. And I guess it started to dawn on people that this not only could rival radio or television as far as advertising goes, but it could surpass it in terms of A more dedicated fan base a more motivated fan base
8:34 Brian Rose: And now fast forward to today where you know spotify is in the business and places like gimlet media Get scooped up for a couple hundred million. What do you make of it now?
8:48 Compared to then
8:49 Adam Carolla: Well, you know, I it’s it’s probably not unlike a lot of businesses and that it didn’t exist and now it does exist, you know, I say, I don’t find it astounding because that’s all business is. Something doesn’t exist and then I didn’t grow up with a smart phone. Now every human being I know has a smart phone. So there’s always an electric car or some stuff’s technology, some stuff’s just, I never heard of Netflix when I was growing up and now everyone has Netflix.
9:30 Some of it is fashion, some of it is technology, some of it is the whims of society and the trends of society. But it’s like, you know, it’s like no one had an iPhone, now everyone has an iPhone. Nobody for the first 10 years of the iPhone had one of those weird little cases where where you could keep your credit cards in the back of them. Now, everybody I know who has an iPhone has a weird little case where you can put your credit cards and driver’s license behind it.
10:08 And five years ago, nobody had one. Now everyone has one. So that’s how business works. And this is, to me, just more of that.
10:16 Brian Rose: Okay, and just to finish with podcasting, do you think it’ll be around 100 years from now?
10:22 And do you think it’ll be the same? Do you think humans will always want to hear each other talk in that type of a format?
10:34 Adam Carolla: Yeah, I mean, thankfully, I think that humans crave an interaction even if it’s sort of a one-way street, you know? I don’t, you know, concerts, you know? I mean, let’s really think about concerts or plays.
10:54 You know, those have been going on for 2,000 years, you know, different. I mean, now the sound is amplified and there’s a pyrotechnics display that goes along with it. And you know, Tommy Lee is in a shark cage spinning around with a drum kit. And I guess the ancient Romans could have never envisioned but if you take a look at concerts or plays or musicals or live spoken word events, it’s not really changed. So I don’t imagine this would change much either.
11:34 Brian Rose: Okay. And like on that note, you just said, do you think everything will get into the metaverse in 25 years from now, Adam, where we’ll all just be doing it with our, you know, Facebook meta goggles or not?
11:52 Adam Carolla: Yeah, I mean, obviously, the delivery system is going to change. For a while, when I started podcasting, the big talk was cars are going to be able to get the internet, like cars are going to have podcasts. And there was talk, like in 2009, 2010, like, oh, BMW is going to come out with a three series that you’re gonna be able to get the internet on it.
12:22 And I guess at the time, no one figured out the phone part. They didn’t figure out the part where you’re gonna get everything on your phone and then you’re gonna plug it in. This was back when a lot of cars had a CD changer in the back that held six CDs, you know, and that kind of stuff. And so we won’t always know. Like I was wrong, everyone around me was wrong.
12:47 We were hoping podcasts and could get into the cars via the stereo, not via the phone, you know? But that kind of stuff’s gonna surprise us along the way, but I think that nuts and the bolts will remain.
13:00 Brian Rose: Yeah, it feels like people will always wanna listen to other people talking and other people performing and whether it’s live or VR or recorded, I guess it’s probably not going anywhere. I wanted to ask you about the book because it’s you answering real questions from real people and you cover everything from cancel culture to Hollywood, to wokeness, to the economy, to the president, I think.
13:26 This book kind of just came to you. And again, I think you originally had a different title. Ask an asshole, advice and answers from the least apologetic man in comedy. But I think your publishers convinced you differently. But yeah, tell me about the genesis of how this book happened.
13:42 Adam Carolla: You know, when you write books, you write a book, and I don’t know, a year and a half goes by, and then your publisher says, do you want to write another book? And then I usually say, yes. And then they go, what do you want to write it about? And you think about it for a while. And the concept of answering questions, having a book of answers that people provided, it just seemed like a good fit because that’s what I’ve done my whole life.
14:23 I started off in radio that way doing Love Line where people would call in and ask advice and then I’d give answers and, you know, mostly oftentimes comedic answers, but I’d still give answers. And so it just became sort of natural that after writing five books, where you sit down and write, that you do one where you answer questions. And it turned out to be an interesting experiment because if you think about it, when you write a book, you usually just sit down and you go, what do I want to talk about?
15:00 And that’s kind of the process of writing a book. And then you start organizing it. You know, well, I want to talk about this and I want to talk about that. Well, that would fit under the heading of politics or family or pop culture. You know, you start shuffling things around and making chapters.
15:21 This is kind of interesting in that I didn’t sit around and go, what do I want to write about? Because people would ask me a question. And some of the questions I’d have to think, I’ve never thought about that. Like I don’t have thoughts about that. I need to force myself to form thoughts about stuff.
15:43 So, you know, imagine any author you enjoy and they write about politics or the old West or World War II, and then you just start asking them questions about other stuff. And now that same person would have to go, I never thought about that, but here’s my answer. And so it made it kind of interesting for me.
16:04 Brian Rose: Nice, so you got some fresh angles, some fresh content, as opposed to if you had just come up with something or your publisher, it would have been something you probably were familiar with.
16:16 Adam Carolla: Well, you know, when you get to your sixth or seventh book and you start writing down stuff you wanna talk about, I do it with a writing partner who’s a stenographer essentially, because I can’t type. And I find myself saying to Mike Lynch, who’s physically doing the writing, I start going off on some tangent. And then I would stop. And I would go, did I say this in any of my other books? Because you lose track.
16:49 And then he’ll go, oh, yeah, not Taco Bell material. I think you did that jag in that book. And I go, oh, I did? Oh, all right, well, that’s off the table. I got to come up with something else because these are all your thoughts and you’re bound to repeat them and by the time you get to, like I said, your sixth or seventh book, you’ve now written down, you know, 2,000 pages of your thoughts and, you know, one only has so many thoughts.
17:23 So this kind of is interesting because you don’t run into that syndrome of like, did And I already talk about this, because I didn’t talk about it, because someone else has asked the question.
17:35 Brian Rose: Right, that’s fascinating. Tell me about a few things. First of all, how was California? I grew up there in San Diego until I was 18, and then I moved out.
17:44 But I watch it now from afar, and sometimes it’s hard to believe some of the things that happened there. You’re still there, although it doesn’t seem to jibe with the way you think about life. So what’s it like, and how long are you gonna stay?
18:01 Adam Carolla: Well, I was born and bred in Southern California. I wasn’t really bred, I was just kind of born.
18:08 My parents didn’t do a lot of breeding. Reading, I have to figure that one out. And then I got out of high school, I got into construction, I just became a builder in my early part of my career. And I didn’t really know you could move anywhere. Um, California used to be, you just lived in California and everyone sort of came to you.
18:38 You know what I mean? Like kind of an elite ism and I guess it’d be like, you know, it’s like you lived in Disneyland and somebody was like, you want to go down the street and go check out someone else’s whatever. And you’d be like, no, I’m in Disneyland. People come here. I will wait for you in California and then I got into show business and you know once I got into show business then I was like well that’s this is where show business is.
19:12 So I stayed here and I slowly kind of watched it erode over the years and you know just high taxes and wildfires and badly managed and homeless situation and over-regulated and you know blah blah blah. And I started to kind of watch it come undone but I also have 16 year old twins who are in their junior year of high school so I would never want to uproot them. them. So I kind of thought, well, I’ll hang out here until they, they graduate high school and then probably start looking for a different place to live.
20:01 Brian Rose: Okay. And how’s the, how is the, the wokeness factor now in LA? Like, what does it feel like to be there and be around the people there?
20:19 Adam Carolla: It’s like, it kind of depends. I mean, I was just on the set of a TV show for a day
20:30 And it’s, you know, big union, everything. And they’re very COVID it out on the set and they’re very paranoid. And so what it’s created, it’s essentially created two groups. It’s basically a group of people that are very fanatical about COVID or woke culture or policy or whatever. So it’s a smaller group. It’s probably 10% or 15%. And then a very large group of people who are scared for their jobs, and also just scared for their social standing, but then it wouldn’t be ostracized, who are then following this small minority of sort of lunatic kind of nut jobs that are sort of dictating policy. So it’s not like like most people agree with the lunatics, it’s that the lunatics could get you removed from your livelihood and so most people go along with it for fear and I was actually talking to Gutfeld, Greg Gutfeld about this a couple of weeks ago on my podcast and he said there There are a small group of people who break away from that and say, I’m not playing, I’m not going along with your lunacy, I’m not wearing a mask outside, I’m not, you know, I’m not wearing rubber gloves inside an Uber, I’m going to speak out against this, I disagree with it you know a boy’s a girl and the girl’s a boy and you know we call we have to call everyone birthing people now because men can give birth and stuff. There’s a small group of people who push back against that and fight against it but we’re starting to kind of drill down and like
22:45 Who are those people and I came up with the conclusion that they’re people that are good at their jobs and do not fear being removed from their livelihood because you can you can cancel fair to Midland mediocre people maybe even decent at their job people but you have a real hard time with canceling excellent people and whether you’re a writer or welder you know I do a lot of car work and I have a guy who works for me and he’s an excellent fabricator. He can put metal together and shape it any way you want. And I have to treat that guy fairly and decently and with a certain amount of respect because if I start riding that guy or hassling that guy, he’ll just go across the street. He knows he’s good at what he does. Like when I was a carpenter, I was a good carpenter.
23:51 I would come to your home, I would work on your home, and you didn’t have to put out a plate of cookies for me, but you had to treat me decently. And if you started to not, I would just leave because I was a good carpenter and I could find work anywhere. And so if you’re really good at what you do, you will find work even in Hollywood or you’ll just break off and do your own thing. You know, I mean, you can’t cancel Joe Rogan. You can’t cancel Ben Shapiro.
24:25 They just go do their own thing. But the lion’s share of people are not excellent. They’re just, they just get along. And Hollywood is filled with people that just get along. And people that just get along who are overcompensated.
24:43 So you take a combination of overcompensated and we don’t really need you that much here, you better shut your mouth and get in line. And that’s what we have. And they don’t like people like me who ignore them and their decrees, because I guess it makes them feel powerless in some way. But I have decided that I’m good enough not to listen to them. And people say, does that hurt your career?
25:14 And the answer is yeah, it does. but I’m good and I get to do what I want and that’s part of being a comedian. It’s not all about how much money you make, it’s about saying what you wanna say and if you can’t say what you wanna say as a comedian, I think it’s time to hang it up.
25:35 Brian Rose: And I guess that’s my next question, Adam. Do you need Hollywood anymore?
25:41 Because you’re writing books, you’re doing comedy, you’ve got your show. Do you still need them maybe the same way you might’ve needed them 20 years ago?
25:51 Adam Carolla: No, I don’t need them at all. And thank God because I’m not welcome. I mean, there is no Hollywood for me.
25:58 It’s all my own. I generate my own business. It’s, I do not get calls to do TV shows or sitcoms or guest appearances, or there is no, there is no Hollywood for me. They’ve, they, I was pretty much done, or I should say Hollywood was pretty much done with me five years ago. And then when COVID hit, that was it.
26:30 I mean, it was, it was essentially a relationship that was on the rocks for five years. And then someone just caught me having sex with my wife’s sister and that’s it. Now it’s over. So COVID put a nail, put the last nail and I’d say the coffin of me in Hollywood.
26:54 Brian Rose: Is that because what you said about COVID?
26:58 Adam Carolla: I think what I said, how I acted, yes, for sure, what I said about COVID.
27:03 Brian Rose: And so it sounds like in Hollywood and maybe in other places in the US, you’re on one side where you have to choose the same issues as in I wear the mask, I feel the same about COVID, I vote Democrat, genders are fluid, there’s birthers. It sounds like you have to make all of those choices on this side and if you’re on the other side, if you disagree with some of those. Is it very much like that?
27:28 Adam Carolla: Yeah, it’s very much like they don’t allow a lot of wiggle room or nuance of thought. So I have elderly parents and I have young kids and as it pertains to let’s say the vaccine. So I would say, by the way, I’ve never said a word about vaccines my entire life. I’m not Robert Kennedy, Jr., I’m like, vaccines, yeah, sure, get a vaccine. sense to me, you know, I, if you’re traveling to Africa, get a vaccine for malaria or whatever you got to do. Like I, I’ve never given it any thought. I’ve just went, whatever the doctor tells you to do, whatever the school board tells you to do, go do it. But then, uh, let’s say the COVID vaccine came about. So I would say, well, I would say to my elderly parents, you should get the vaccine. And then I would say to my teenage son, you don’t need the vaccine. You’re healthy, you’re young. It’s not going to affect you like it would affect my parents. And I have no idea what the ramifications of the vaccine down the road for you might be 15-year-old, for you 90-year-old, who cares. So get the vaccine and you don’t get the vaccine. That then makes you an anti-vaxxer in the eyes of Hollywood even though I’ve never said anything about vaccines my entire career because I’ve had no thoughts about them. This one I sized up and went you get it and you don’t need it and those kind of thoughts or why are we wearing masks outside or many other nuanced thoughts like that, those are the kind of thoughts that would get you put into a sort of COVID denier,
29:29 I guess, group, and that’s where it is. Now, for me, and most people are scared, and most people have to work in Hollywood, that’s their livelihood, so they don’t agree with it, but they definitely shut up about it, because they’re frightened, and look, rightfully so, A lot of people have been canceled. So for me, it’s like, I say to people, they go, well, then you get ostracized and you get criticized and you get shunned. And they go, isn’t that uncomfortable? Like, don’t you dislike that? And I go, well, to some extent, yeah, nobody, everyone wants to be invited to the party.
30:13 Party. But I said, if you were at a convention for flat earthers and you had to get up in the podium and speak, would you say the earth is flat? And my answer is, I wouldn’t. I’d say, the earth is round. And then everyone would start booing. And I’d say, I don’t know what you want me to tell you. That’s what it is. And then the after party would would suck for me, but the earth is round.
30:46 So that’s what I’m gonna say. And that’s how I felt about COVID. So the after-party suck, living in Hollywood and speaking the way I was speaking about COVID, but what are my choices? Join you in saying the earth is flat. I couldn’t live with myself.
31:06 Brian Rose: Yeah, I always love that analogy. It’s funny, when all that was happening in 2020, We got into a big fight with YouTube with kind of freedom of speech issues. And that was always one of my examples. Like the Flat Earthers, they were all over YouTube and they were allowed to talk about things that were crazy. But if you had different opinions on masks and COVID and vaccines, those were taken off.
31:27 So it’s always kind of a fascinating-
31:30 Adam Carolla: It’ll all come out that it was all part of the big plan. Anyway, I mean, it’s already trickling out that all these big tech companies were in cahoots with the government and the messaging and the de-platforming dissenting voices, it’s all gonna come out. I mean, I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but it’s all gonna come out that people were being silenced and it wasn’t a coincidence.
31:56 Brian Rose: Yeah, we felt the sharp end of that. I always thought crazy people got censored until it happens to you.
32:03 Adam Carolla: And then you’re like, oh, it’s not just a- I got put in YouTube jail because we played a clip of the guy who runs County USC hospital saying, we’re not full, our ICU is not full, we’re not filled with COVID patients, we have open beds. I don’t know what people are saying. That’s not what’s happening at our hospital. The guy who runs the hospital said that. We showed the clip and we got put in YouTube jail.
32:35 For COVID misinformation. So these people, they’re insane, but obviously insane with an agenda, and that’s the scary part.
32:44 Brian Rose: Yeah, yeah. This will all be dissected 10, 20 years from now, and it’ll be a fascinating documentary, right? Yes.
32:53 What’s this series of? You know, I mentioned you got 16-year-olds. My daughter’s 18, and she’s going off to university in Boston. And Adam, I was wondering if you could tell me, first of all, is that a good idea? because I went and visited and I start to get the pulse of what universities are like these days.
33:09 And it’s not when I went to school 30 years ago, they seem very different. I know you did a whole film with this with Dennis Prager and he’s been on the show, but like will your twins be going to university? What do we need to know about what’s happening at universities now? And is there anything we can do about it?
33:29 Adam Carolla: Well, I think my daughter wants to go. I know that my son is much interested and going to university, you know, if you think about it, I mean, I know there’s thoughts, guys like Dennis Prager and a lot of people that think, well, you go to off to college and then you get indoctrinated into this world and this sort of politically incorrect sort of insane world, which is true, but if you really think about it, it starts in high school now. It’s kind of ubiquitous, you know, it’s sort of, it’ll start in grade school now.
34:17 It’s kind of everywhere. So maybe this fear of going off to college and being indoctrinated is unfounded because your kid’s already being poisoned at the junior high level. if you think about the new world order, you know? So good news and bad news, you don’t have to worry about your kid being poisoned in college. The bad news is they were already poisoned by the eighth grade with all the nonsense.
34:50 So I’m not much interested in college. I never have been, mainly based on life experience. I’ve never met anybody who I’ve worked with who were college factored into the work. Now I was a carpenter and then I was a comedian. So, you know, I didn’t work in engineering, but I worked most of the successful people I know either didn’t complete college or did complete college with some other degree that has, it’s neither here nor there in whatever they do today.
35:32 And also I used to when we did the man show every year we would read piles of writer submissions everyone wanted to write on the man show and we’d have to go through all these writer submissions and they would say the guy went to Harvard or Yale or Stanford or Princeton or San Diego State or or CSUN, or no college. But ultimately, we would just read the writer’s packet and the funniest writer’s packet we would hire. And if they went to Harvard, I guess that was like a little extra window dressing or something, but we’d hire the guy from Cal State Northridge over the guy who went to Yale.
36:25 If his writer’s packet was a little bit funnier, and if there’s a guy who took a few units at the junior college and then dropped out to work in his dad’s landscaping business, and his was funnier than the guy from Cal State Northridge, we’d hire that guy. So it became kind of clear to me that it’s all about performance. Nobody cares. I mean, think about all the people. I mean, you kind of think about, you know, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, like, what college did they go to?
37:01 And my answer is, I don’t know. Maybe they went to a great college. Maybe they didn’t go to a good college. Or you think about the voices you enjoy the most or the thinkers or the ones, the people you’re most attracted to philosophically. Where did they go to college?
37:19 The answer is, I don’t know. I don’t know if they went to college. I don’t care, it doesn’t, it’s not factoring in for me. And I think as a society, we’re getting more and more like that. Plus there’s a lot of self-education going on these days.
37:34 Brian Rose: I mean- Oh my God, yes. I mean, with everything on the internet and YouTube and everything, you can kind of do a lot of self-teaching there. But yeah, it’s a good point. I guess it does start super early these days. So you’re not going to get away from it, I guess, per se.
37:47 Right, yeah. What’s the, when you look at politics in America you look at President Biden and you look at a potential Trump coming back or whatever happened in the Republican Party, what do you see? And is that a reflection of America? And have you ever seen politics this way in your entire life?
38:13 Adam Carolla: No, I haven’t. And Biden is horrible, not just because of, you know, bad policies, but he’s really turned out to be kind of a despicable person and that he ran on this unity kind of platform. You know, he was, you know, it was basically Trump was president and for four years the Democrats were, their hair was on fire. They were just going nuts. They just were the most agitated ever. And it was like Biden came in and it was like just kind of slow and steady, old Joe, you know what you were getting. And so he sort of came in and he sort of went, it’s going to end, all the craziness. So the thing about Trump is Trump’s policies weren’t crazy, but he drove people crazy and so it was sort of like a half-baked analogy but let’s just say you and your wife were living together and you hired a full-time nanny to take care of your kids and your wife was like she drives me nuts she’s making me crazy and then you were like all she does is cook and clean all day and then when she goes home at night she sends out a tweet that you hate you know and then I would say to my wife look the house is clean there’s food in the refrigerator the kids diapers been
39:55 Changed and she would keep going she’s driving me nuts she’s driving me nuts I don’t like the way she dresses I don’t like the car she drives I don’t like the tweet she sends out when she gets back to her apartment she’s right and I’m saying to the wife who cares we got a clean house and there’s food on you know she makes a great lasagna and then at a certain point you go listen to the to the nanny you go you’re a good nanny but you’re driving my wife nuts and i have to fire you because i have to live with my wife and And I just want, I just want calm. I just, I just want calm, you know what I mean? And you go, okay, I just, she’s going insane.
40:40 I don’t want to live with an insane person. I’m sorry. And you get rid of the nanny and then Joe comes in and Joe goes, you tired of the craziness? I’m the guy for you. We can get back to normal Americans, living with Americans, not going insane.
40:58 And that’s how he pitched himself. And then he went right down this, you know, white supremacy is the biggest problem this country has. And he went down this weird racial division road and saying Jim Crow 2.0 over and over again. And he just went right into this sort of divisive we’re at each other’s throats again world. So whatever the unity he sort of promised, He did not pursue that.
41:31 Brian Rose: And will he get reelected? And then is Trump coming back? And what do you think about that? Will Joe Biden get reelected? Yeah.
41:40 Adam Carolla: No, no, even his own party hates him. He’s clearly deficient. I mean, there’s something wrong with him. So I don’t think physically he’s capable of it, but I don’t think anyone. Anyone is interested in Joe Biden.
42:00 Brian Rose: And are they interested in Trump coming back?
42:04 Adam Carolla: The thing about Trump is what, I’ll tell you what hurts Trump. What hurts Trump is the crate is the nanny who drives the wife crazy syndrome. Like I think there’s a fair number of conservatives and a fair number of Republicans and a fair number of independents who say, look, um, what he did in the Middle East in terms of peace accords, that was great. Moving the embassy to Jerusalem, that was great.
42:41 I agree with him on the border. I think we need a stiffer, stouter border. Yeah, I want him to lower taxes. I like a lot of his ideas. I just don’t want to have to live with the insane people who go nuts.
42:57 It’s four years of people going insane. And so I think there’s a lot of people that go, I like Trump, I like what he’s, I like his policies. I don’t, you know, I don’t really care if he sends out weird tweets in the middle of the night. I want the corporate tax rate lowered or whatever it is, whatever it is Trump is, I wanna be energy independent. Okay, this country’s having a lot of difficulty with energy.
43:25 I liked Trump’s policy with energy because under Trump we had energy independence and under Biden, we have to import oil from OPEC nations, right? So I think a lot of people go, I like Trump, but the problem is he tries my wife nuts and I got to live with her. So no, because I got to live with this woman.
43:48 Brian Rose: Got it. So is there someone like Rick DeSantis of Florida that might be able to come in and can he get reelected?
43:56 Adam Carolla: Can he get elected? That’s the question. But if so, people would prefer someone like that. Well, you have to keep in mind though, Rick DeSantis is gonna come in, could come in. And then the journalist will launch into, he’s homophobic, he’s racist, he’s whatever, and they will get people ginned up and freaked out and angry.
44:25 And he’ll be smeared as all the things Trump was. And then people, and then he will sort of stand his ground. What drives them nuts is when you don’t apologize. Like what drove the left off in a cliff is if you have to think back and people watching can Google it, it’s funny. But there’s this young woke female reporter And she’s in the press room and she’s saying to Trump, I don’t know, two years ago, she’s saying, you call it the China virus, the Chinese virus.
45:07 Don’t you realize that’s racist? Don’t you realize that you’re gonna get Chinese hurt by calling it the Chinese virus? It’s racist. And he just goes, no, it’s not. And she goes, why do you keep calling it the Chinese virus?
45:23 And he goes, because it’s from China, that drives them insane. Because their thing is, they have a mode and a plan, and they’re used to it, which is we call everyone racist, and then they apologize to us. That’s how this dance works. And when you don’t dance with them, they go ballistic. And so Trump drove them insane because he wouldn’t apologize.
45:52 And DeSantis will drive them insane equally. And then he will be painted as a racist and homophobic and xenophobic. And we’ll go through this whole rinse cycle again.
46:06 Brian Rose: Okay, so that’s a possibility. We’ll see what happens in two years.
46:11 Adam, what do you make of this recession, inflation? What does it feel like on the ground there? And like, you know, what do you tell people?
46:22 Adam Carolla: I don’t tell people much. I don’t do much.
46:25 I sort of put my head down and I just go to work. I’ve been around, I’ve seen the ups and I’ve seen the downs. Obviously printing money and telling people to stay home doesn’t really work economically. And then we wanna sort of put out inflation by printing more money. And so we’re sort of insane economically.
46:49 It seems like a losing game, But if you go back and you just sort of look at things historically, there’s ups, there’s downs, you know, unfortunately, you know, in war time, you know, you can see what happens to countries, economies during World War I or World War II. And hey, man, you got to stop making Chevrolet’s. You got to start making tanks, you know? And so it affects negatively the economy of the countries that are going to war. But during peacetime, these are sort of self-inflicted wounds.
47:34 And that’s kind of the sad part. This is all just bad policy. We decided to just print an inordinate amount of money and hand it out. And of course, we screwed up our economy. And then we decided to do something called the recession improvement fund or something where we just printed more money and then gave it to solar wind companies.
47:59 So obviously we screwed up our own economy. The sad part is it’s self-inflicted versus World War II.
48:06 Brian Rose: All right, got it. And so you’re just gonna keep your head down and just see if you can power through this and that’s what people should do. And hopefully our monetary policy won’t, won’t keep crushing us as well as they print more money.
48:22 Adam Carolla: It’d be nice. Um, if you’re going to, if you’re going to keep printing money, I think it’s going to affect us.
48:29 Brian Rose: Uh, Adam, got a personal question to kind of wrap this up. Um, I said yes to a boxing match this year and I’m, uh, it would have been my first boxing match at 51 years old and it actually almost happened at the O2 arena here in London. And I know you used to box and train boxing as well. And, um, It actually got called off because the main event dropped out, but I think it might happen again.
48:52 What advice do you have for me if I’m going into that boxing match? And would you encourage me to accept something like that at my age? And yeah, your thoughts overall on older men boxing.
49:05 Adam Carolla: Well, it would be your first boxing match.
49:08 Brian Rose: Yeah, I mean, a little sparring in the gym, but I’ve never actually done anything in front of people.
49:15 Adam Carolla: You know, what I would say. What I would say is you’re going to practice and work out and train and then you’re going to go into the ring and you’re going to get this adrenaline dump and all the technique you’ve worked on is going to go out the window. And that’s really, that’s the fight. The fight isn’t with the opponent, the fight is with yourself. it’s like you’ve trained and trained and trained for the swim meet and the you know the hundred-yard free stroke and then the big swim match comes and you jump in the pool and start flailing and drown because you’ve got this big adrenaline dump. So the key is you can train all you want but if If you just go in the ring under the lights and get the crazy adrenaline dump and all the technique flies out the window, then you’re going to lose the fight and or you’re going to look like an idiot.
50:26 So the real training is kind of a mental training, like how do you take, you’ll be fine in the gym. We’ll be watching you in the gym. Oh, his hands are up, his jab is straight, his cross is straight, his technique looks tight and polished and then you’ll get in the ring and start flailing, which happens to everybody. So a lot of it is going to be that technique being able to transfer it from the gym into the ring that night, right? And so you’re not going to get 100% of that technique, that tight form that you’ve been working on the gym into the ring that night because there’s so much adrenaline flowing. But you got to say, I got to get 85% of that technique into this ring under the lights with the crowd, with the announcers, with familiar faces sitting ringside. I got to take 85% of that and I got to get it into this ring. And I would say the best way to do that is focus on your stance.
51:38 It’s all about your stance. If your feet start getting wide or close or whatever stiff or whatever, just really get that base down and when in doubt, throw a jab. Just keep throwing that jab. Your technique can only be so bad if your feet are right and your jab is pumping. You’re just not and everything will come off of the jab. It’ll be a muscle memory thing. So really, If I went to the gym with you, I would say all we’re going to do is move around the ring and all you’re going to do is throw that jab. I’m not interested in overhand rights. I’m not interested in uppercuts. I’m not interested in infighting and close.
52:23 I just want to see you move and punch that jab out there. Just keep working that. Keep working in your movement and let’s work on techniques not to have the adrenaline dump because when the adrenaline dump hits, the technique dump is right behind it.
52:42 Brian Rose: Wow, that’s super good advice, Adam. Super good.
52:46 Yeah, I was working with David Hay here in London who was massive world champ boxer before and he was watching me with my trainer and he said, Brian, you gotta spar somebody you’ve never met before. And it was like six weeks out, five weeks out, and I’m like, I don’t know, David, I wanna get injured. And he’s like, Brian, you’re just kidding yourself. I’m gonna bring in someone. We’re gonna pretend like this is a real fight.
53:08 You’re not gonna chit-chat with them beforehand. I’m gonna come in, I’m gonna announce it, and you’re gonna go three rounds just like you would. And you’re gonna think about it all day, and the day before, you’re gonna get nervous, you’re gonna get butterflies in your stomach, but this is the only way we’re gonna do this. And he did that to me. And it was the most terrified I’ve been in years, Adam.
53:29 And this kid must have been half my age across the ring and everything was okay and I went to three rounds but it started getting me used to what that’s like.
53:38 Adam Carolla: That’s a perfect example, very smart. And then keep it super simple. So like, yeah, no six punch combos, none of this nonsense because it’s all gonna go out the goddamn window. Just super basic, you have three combos and that’s all you’re gonna do and they’re simple.
53:53 Brian Rose: And like you said, great advice you gave, stance and jab. So, okay, good. I might be calling you when we get closer to the fight as well. Adam, what’s the best place people can get the book? It’s everyone reminds me of something.
54:06 And again, what we talked about today, there’s a lot of this and your opinions and answering questions like I asked you in the book. Where’s the best place people can get it?
54:18 Adam Carolla: You just go to adamcorolla.com. You can find out or Amazon or whatever, but you go to adamcorolla.com, find out live dates, appearances, Listen to the podcast for free. What have you in the book?
54:31 I guess you can just get it from Amazon.
54:33 Brian Rose: And Adam, what’s next for you? Like, if we fast forward 10 years from now, are you still doing comedy? You’re still doing your podcast? Are you doing crazy things, new things?
54:43 What do you think?
54:44 Adam Carolla: I hope so. I hope I’m doing something crazy and new and different. I mean, it’s always my plan to do something interesting. But to me, you know, I have a good life.
54:55 I get to do comedy, I get to share my ideas, I get to travel, I get to meet people, I get to do almost everything I wanna do. So I hope more of the same plus some.
55:06 Brian Rose: And you won’t be in California or you might be in California?
55:11 Adam Carolla: I think I’ll be out of California.
55:13 Brian Rose: Okay, all right.
55:14 It’s fantastic stuff. Adam, again, thank you for the inspiration. Again, when I started in 11, it was like all eyes were on you and you were a great example of what a podcast could be back when nobody, especially in Britain, knew what a podcast was. So thank you for that. The book is incredible.
55:31 Everything reminds me of something. People can grab it on Amazon or go to your website as well and get your podcast. So thanks a lot, Adam. Next time, let’s do this in London, shall we?
55:39 Adam Carolla: Thanks, Brian.
55:40 I enjoyed it. All right, take care.
55:49 Brian Rose: Take care, everybody. We’ll see you next time on London Real. Thanks, Adam, bye.
