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July 1, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show
59:36
Adam Carolla | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 8
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Time Text
You don't really have to be doing anything until you're 30.
Like, I know in your Doogie Howser world, you have to graduate with honors at 16.
Otherwise, there's going to be an issue.
But.
Well, hey, and welcome.
It is today's Sunday special with Adam Carolla.
We're going to jump in in just a second.
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Well, Adam Carolla, thanks for joining me on Sunday Special.
My pleasure.
It is a pleasure to see the founder and creator of the pirate community.
I mean, so Adam Carolla, for those who don't know, created essentially the podcast medium.
I mean, it was really Adam who, well, you did.
I mean, there are other podcasts out there, but Adam's the guy who actually made podcasts a thing where people could support themselves and have a living doing it.
Yeah, maybe.
Yeah, there were others, but yeah, I was probably the first one sort of independently to figure out a way to do it without maybe a parent company like NPR or ESPN or something like that.
I want to talk about exactly how you came to do that.
I want to start by talking a little bit about your upbringing because you're a really eclectic dude.
I mean, you have the podcast, you're making a documentary now with Dennis Prager about bias on college campuses.
You didn't go to college.
You aren't really overtly conservative.
You're more just a common sense guy.
Yes.
So where did you come from?
I mean, you're now listened to by a million people per episode, right?
I mean, it's a huge number.
I was squeezed out of a bar rag.
That's where I came from.
And I grew up in North Hollywood, California, which, you know, has the word Hollywood in it, but couldn't be any further than Hollywood.
It was like from Hollywood, like every once in a while I'd be like, I saw Robert Urich in the parking lot of the Quigley's.
Oh my God.
You know, and like, there's like weird things like that, but really no celebrities.
I grew up food stamps and welfare and a kind of disjointed family where we got stuff for free from my grandparents and the man.
And I kind of quickly, I got a quick, lesson in how that works.
So I grew up in North Hollywood.
My grandparents had a house in North Hollywood.
These are one bedroom, one bath houses, like 900 square foot houses.
And the second house they bought in the fifties for literally like $10,000, we got to live at because my mom was not doing very well and my parents got divorced and so on and so forth.
And so we sort of got a So even though no one has been Nobody had a job and nobody had any money.
We lived in a house versus an apartment because my grandparents sort of took pity on their daughter and let us squat in this house.
Now, like, the first thing I figured out is the reason the house was always a mess and the reason it was always falling apart and disheveled and everything else is because there was no ownership.
Like, and she shouldn't have been living in a house.
We should have been in an apartment somewhere or in a van.
So, we lived in this house and the house just kind of came undone.
Because, again, you hand somebody something for free and it just starts coming undone.
And then it was like food stamps and welfare and whatever free, like literally spaghetti night at the church, go to the church, like whatever we could get free lunch programs at the school with the tickets and the breakfast programs, like all the programs, all the freebies, all the whatever.
And I just kind of remember thinking like, I felt like my family was sort of hobbled because they got just enough to get by and not be really motivated.
So they just kind of existed.
What about your white privilege?
I mean, I assume that got you through.
What time is it?
Because I'm still, they keep saying, they still, look, it's insane, because what's insane with me is I do think there is a kind of a weird, there is a kind of a prejudice, or like an assumed prejudice, when people go, well, Adam, come on, you're well spoken, you're a white guy, you drive a nice car, you went to college.
Like, I would say, like I will say to people, I went to North Hollywood High, I graduated North Hollywood High, I started cleaning carpets up the street, literally A and B carpet cleaning, and then I got into construction.
When I say got into construction, I showed up on a job site and pulled ivy off the side of a house in Silver Lake and dragged it up to the dumpster.
I dug ditches.
I literally dug ditches.
I picked up garbage, and that's all I did.
And they'd go, well, what'd you do after college?
You're not listening.
No college.
No SATs.
I never took an algebra class.
I took high school math.
Dumb I was.
I looked at my transcript the other day.
I came in at North Hollywood High, out of my graduating class of 570, I came in 497.
And I know 30 of those kids moved to Phoenix, or died, or like both.
Like that, literally like almost out of 500 kids, I came up 497.
So I was a horrible student.
And even when I tried, I was a horrible student.
And Then I just got pushed out into the world and just sort of had to make do.
And in terms of the white privilege, I worked this notion of like, hey, these are jobs Americans won't do.
When I did carpet cleaning, which is the lowest form of manual labor, like literally get into a van, drive to a Colony Kitchen or Tony Roma's or whatever in the middle of the night and just get the steamer out and steam the entire wand and clean the entire restaurant and then go back at four in the morning, drop the van off and go home and get paid six bucks an hour.
I did that originally with Chris Bohm, white guy.
Ray Oldhoffer, super white guy.
Todd Oyler.
Jewish guy, Willy Maldonado, like Italian and or Jewish guy, and Adam Carolla.
Those were the five white folks that worked for A&B Carpet in the 80s when we were cleaning carpet.
And then later on, when I got to a construction site, there were Latin guys and then there was me and other white guys.
We were just poor.
The thing is like, Whenever someone goes like, who's gonna pick your lettuce?
Or who's gonna dig that ditch?
Or who's gonna clean your carpets?
Or who's gonna bust those trays?
Like, four people.
I knew a lot of four people.
So where did you get the work ethic from?
Because it sounds like your mom wasn't big into it.
And yet, you're somebody who was working hard basically from the time that you left high school.
And I know you were into football when you were in high school as well.
Yeah, I learned my work ethic from sports, probably football, which was a really hard Taxing's sort of hot.
You know, like I learned football will teach you discomfort and how to kind of tolerate discomfort because when you're in the San Fernando Valley and you're running, you're doing two a days in early September and it's brutal outside and they think water's bad you're doing two a days in early September and it's brutal outside Like just rinse.
Don't, you don't literally like spit it out.
You'll cramp up.
Like I'm depleted.
Please.
And you're just running wind sprints and like full, full gear.
It's crazy.
It's kind of, it's like the military.
So I probably learned that later on.
I just learned that I had to use my back to make money.
So I didn't have any kind of, there was no path in intellectually to get paid.
So if I was gonna get paid, it was gonna be because there was a stack of drywall over there, and you needed that stack of drywall moved over there, and that's how I got paid.
And literally digging ditches and just demoing out stucco and hauling garbage.
That's all I did.
I had jobs.
Where I just get dropped off at the Pier 1 Imports now on Wilshire in Santa Monica.
We built it a million years ago.
And there's just a huge pile of dirt, like size of two minivans, and they gave me a shovel and a wheelbarrow, and they're like, the dumpster's over there.
And they're like, however long it takes you to get that into that, then you can leave.
And I was just alone, just like all day, just scoop, you know, one load at a time, like counting my steps and trying not to go insane.
But anyway.
As someone who once picked up an object, this sounds terrible to me.
Yes.
I could definitely, this would not be in the Shapiro wheelhouse.
In 1996, Ben Shapiro picked up a feather duster and handed it to one of his squires, but that's still counted.
Yeah, they have some manual labor in the Jewish community right there.
Oh yeah, yeah, it was funny because there are no Jews on the construction site ever, which always is something that is funny because when I did construction, All throughout the San Fernando Valley.
I'd be in Chatsworth, Canoga Park, Simi Valley, blah, blah, blah.
No one ever said to me, you're Jewish, right?
Because I could go either way.
I got Adam.
Right.
I got the Jewfro.
I would complain a lot.
You know, they're like, what?
That guy.
But no one, it was, I was definitely Italian or just a non-Jew.
When I got out of construction and got into writing comedy, it was like, well, you're Jewish, you know, right?
And I'm like, no, I'm not Jewish.
And they're like, I've never, I was never mistaken for a Jew on a construction site.
And I've never mistaken for a goyim in a writer's room.
It just, just goes to show you, like you tell people, You know, you tell people, hey, don't stereotype.
Well, they're just playing the odd.
Zero Jews on a construction site.
Zero, you know, Goyim with this hair in a writer's room.
It's like they're trying to save time.
I learned how to work hard, like work in construction.
And it was like, but I also learned, like, I don't want to get paid by the hour because I remember having these fantasies where I was going, well, you're getting $8 an hour now.
And your job, your plan is to see if you can work 50, maybe 60 hours a week and pay your bills with your roommates and your apartments and stuff like that.
But I was like, even if you got paid, I'd probably think of some princely sum like $18 an hour or $22 an hour.
Even if you got paid, let's just say $25 an hour, It still would be by the hour.
You would still have to be here on this job site that you don't want to be on.
So I started thinking early.
Maybe the by the hour way isn't the way to go.
And so how did you get from doing that to comedy?
I mean, that's a pretty radical shift from, as you say, being the person who is schlepping wheelbarrows full of dirt places to being in writer's rooms on comedy.
How did you actually do that?
I sat down in my apartment when I was like 22 And I'd been doing labor for, you know, like labor and carpentry for maybe three years and I was driving like a beat up old mini pickup truck with like no headrests and stuff and like I didn't have insurance and I wasn't, construction is very like day labor kind of stuff.
Like it's like, You don't get paid on Christmas.
If it rains, you don't go to work.
You don't get paid that day.
Literally, if you rolled your ankle playing basketball on a Sunday and you couldn't go in, they wouldn't care, but you don't get paid.
You wouldn't have to call anyone and go, I'm not gonna be here.
They'd just be like, don't be here.
Just don't get paid.
We won't pay you.
If you left at lunchtime and did half a day, you just have 34 hours on your time card.
And I was like, Huh.
That sucks.
Like, how are you going to own a house?
How are you going to pay mortgage?
How are you even going to get credit?
I didn't have credit or anything.
Like, everything was kind of under the table or whatever it was.
It was like catch as catch can.
And I was just like, it's gonna be a long, uncomfortable life.
And your family's not in the equation in terms of like, no one's gonna leave you a business, or your grandfather's collection of Duesenbergs will be all yours.
You'll be able to sell them at auction and live comfortably.
No one had anything, no one's gonna help.
So I was like 22, 23, I was in my apartment with no air conditioning in North Hollywood, my three roommates in a one bedroom, and I was like, All right, so what's the plan?
What could possibly be the plan?
And one plan was like, well, get your contractor's license and get a better truck and maybe get a crew or something like that.
I was just like, yeah, but that's still tough and it's a lot of work and you get your tools ripped off and it's just, it's a tough life and you don't get paid that much.
And so I was like, all right, so what else do you do?
And I was like, well, you're funny.
Like, so you're good with your hands and then you're funny.
So I was like trying to think of things like sort of practically, even though comedy doesn't sound very practical and it doesn't sound like a high percentage sort of job to go into.
But I knew anything that involved studying or training or test taking, that wouldn't work.
Like it was not going to be, I was like, oh, you'll be a dental hygienist.
And I was like, no, I would never be able to pull that off.
So I was like, you are good at comedy.
Now, I don't even know what that means.
It just means I was good at comedy like people are good with their hands, but you still have to learn a skill, a trade.
You know, otherwise being just good with your hands does not mean you can read plans and build a house.
So I was like, okay, so what's the plan?
And the plan was you're 22, You don't really have to be doing anything until you're 30, in my world.
Like, I know in your Doogie Howser world, you have to graduate with honors at 16, otherwise there's gonna be an issue.
But for me, I was like, When you're 30, you must become a man.
That was my bar mitzvah.
I was like, I think you can screw around.
No one really thinks you're a loser when you're screwing around in your 20s.
But at 30, I want to be doing something.
But my goal was Don't put the pressure on yourself.
You have like eight years to figure out this thing called comedy, and don't even put the pressure on yourself, which is when you're, you know, 30, you gotta be on TV, you have to have your own show, or you have to be syndicated radio host, or, I didn't have any of that.
I just had, right now you're making money off your back.
Could you make money off of your ideas or something that involves some air conditioning?
Like, I just wanted some air conditioning.
When it gets hot and you just eat, you sit on a pile of drywall and it's like, it gets brutal.
I've lived out here my entire life.
I gotcha, yeah.
I was just like, I would be happy working for a greeting card company if we were in a room and there were three people pitching funny Father's Day cards and I could come up with some funny ideas.
That was about it.
I didn't have the bar too high, but I needed to be doing something that had dental insurance or something.
And so I just said, well, what do you got to do?
And somebody said, well, take a groundlings class and you could go to the groundlings and like learn how to do improvisational comedy and get up on stage and do group comedy and sketches and like write stuff down and stuff like that.
I was like, okay.
So here I was, Like literally with no car insurance and no medical or dental insurance or anything, just living hand to mouth.
But I paid like $275 for a groundlings class, you know, and I was like going out on Sunday nights and just doing open mics and waiting in line and stuff like that.
And everyone in my world was kind of like, are you nuts?
Like, what are you paying for?
And like, we're going out Sunday night or whatever.
We're getting some beers.
We're going to the park, you know, whatever.
And I'd be like, I'm going to go wait in line.
at Rooster Teeth Feathers to do a three-minute set, you know?
And everyone's like, are you high?
And I was like, I don't know what I'm doing, but I know I have to do this thing over here.
But I still have to work full-time in this very different world, which is construction.
And so how did you get from doing, you know, three-minute comedy sets to then doing what you're doing now?
Because that's a pretty large jump.
There are a lot of folks in LA who are in line with you.
Yeah.
Who are now probably managing Coffee Bean.
Yeah.
Who are now doing exactly what you're doing.
No, I know, and I curse those people.
And the reason I curse them is because many nights I would go out and it's like, hey, we're cutting it off at 40 people.
Or 40 or 50 people would show up and they'd go, only 18 are getting up on stage.
So put your name in a hat.
The guy would pull the name out and I wouldn't make it.
And I realized, If you are doing something and you shouldn't be doing it, you're possibly preventing other people who should be doing it from doing it.
So it's like, I didn't get up on stage that night because the guy who's managing the coffee bean did get up on stage.
I was plugging around for like eight years and I was doing stand-up and I was doing sketch and I was doing little acting and I was doing little writing and I was having little bits and pieces of miniature success.
I'd also at that time got into teaching boxing for a living because, not for a living, I taught morning classes at a place called Bodies in Motion.
I teach like the 7 a.m.
class or the 6.30 a.m.
class and it's getting like 20 bucks a class or something.
But it was boxing was just another story, something I was into and blah, blah, blah.
But it was part of me kind of going, As you get to 30 and as the comedy dream isn't really coming to fruition, doing something where you're on your feet, where you're interacting with people, where you're talking to people, construction would be lonely.
You'd just go there and you'd work alone a lot of times, just be sitting in some half-finished house in Simi Valley just putting in molding.
base shoe or crown or whatever, just all day.
And like, I was kind of like, I want to talk.
I want ideas.
I want to clown.
I want to, you know, make people laugh and whatever.
So when I was teaching my boxing classes, you'd get these 20 people and you get to kind of conduct and lead.
And like, I I taught comedy traffic school for the same reason.
I don't care about traffic school, but I want to be on my feet, I want to be telling jokes, and I want to be whatever.
So I was doing all these things, and so I would teach boxing in the morning, and then I would go do my carpentry.
At that point, I just worked for myself, like I said.
Clients and I just build cabinets or whatever.
I was kind of getting by.
And I was driving my truck over the hill with somebody's entertainment unit in the back.
And it was a very, it was kind of a haunting thing.
And I'll tell you why.
Because, just to come full circle here.
So I'm driving over the hill and I'm going to a woman named Marjorie Grossman's house.
Probably Jewish.
And she is writing for Seinfeld.
She has a job writing for Seinfeld and she heard about me and she just bought her first house on the west side and putting in, I'm going to build her an entertainment unit, blah, blah, blah.
And so I literally called from her house as I'm driving over the hill.
I'm listening to KROQ Radio, I'm listening to Kevin and Bean, I'm listening to Jimmy the Sports Guy, who's now Jimmy Kimmel, back then like Third Banana on The Morning Show, getting into an argument with Michael the Maintenance Man, and next thing you know we're going to have a boxing match between Michael the Maintenance Man and Jimmy the Sports Guy.
I didn't know either one of them, obviously.
I'm like a person just listening to the radio, you know?
And I get to Marjorie Grossman's house, and I'm like, could I use your phone?
And I'm calling KROQ going, hey, I'm a boxing trainer, because they put it out.
They're like, we need trainers.
We need a venue.
We need equipment.
And I'm like, I could train.
Now, it's so funny, because everyone assumes I wanted to train Jimmy.
But I didn't, because Jimmy had just got to the radio station.
He was there like for three or four weeks.
Michael, the maintenance man, had been there for a number of years.
It was kind of a fixed year.
Also, Michael was black, and I was just playing the odds like we did on the construction site in the writer's room.
I was just gonna...
They give me the brother.
I bet he's got a little more ability in that ring.
And so I didn't want to train.
I'll take either one of them.
But I it wasn't like I was just calling from Marjorie's house going, I'll hold, you know, and like like leaving a message.
Hey, this is Frank Murphy, producer of The Morning Show.
This never called back like 100 minutes.
I'd be.
And I remember also I was talking to Marjorie and she's like, yeah, I write for Seinfeld.
How does it work?
He's like, well, we get into a big room, you know, and we order some Chinese food.
I'm like, who pays for the Chinese food?
He's like, I don't know, but you don't have to pay for it.
I'm like, no.
Like, someone else pays for the Chinese food?
Yeah.
Or we could get Italian every day.
Like, yeah.
Because on the construction side, it was always like, oh, who owes the lunch truck money?
You know, so it's like, yeah, we just start spitballing ideas and then we have a big dry erase board.
I'm like, and you're getting like thousands of dollars a week for eating Chinese food and spitballing ideas.
And I was like, oh, and I remember thinking like, you got it made, you So I was building her thing, and I kept calling KROQ, and they kept not answering.
And then, like, the next day, I would hear them again on the radio, like, hey, we're looking for trainers.
And they'd interview, like, a trainer on the phone, like, hey, we got a trainer on the phone.
And I'd be like, no, no, no, it's me.
I'll be the trainer.
I'll be the trainer.
And at some point, I realized I need to show up at KROQ, because nobody's I didn't have a cell phone.
I had to go use Marjorie Grossman's phone.
And I had to go to the building.
I found out where the building was in Burbank, and I showed up before my class at like 6 a.m.
And I got into the lobby, but the building was closed.
Like, I couldn't go up the elevator to K-Rock or whatever.
And I was like, they're like, yeah, the elevators don't start going until seven or something.
So I went and taught my class.
And the next day, I got a guy named Tree, who, good name, man.
Last name Roundtree, nickname Tree.
That's a boxing coach.
So I got tree to cover my class and I went back at 7 and I got up the elevator to the 9th floor where KROQ was, like commercial building.
But KROQ was locked.
Like KROQ didn't open until 9 for business.
So now I'm just standing in the halls of the 9th floor of a commercial building in Burbank by the elevators and I'm like, That they don't show up till nine the morning shows on but they're like tucked away in the corner and it'd be like you and I sitting here and someone just standing out in the lobby who couldn't get up here so I just stood there like I was like where should I go what should I do and I stood there and some guy came up the elevator
And he clearly like had like a hand truck or something.
He had business, like he was dropping off some stuff and he was walking around this back hall to like go in what is now I know is the back door of KROQ with the keypad or whatever.
And I was like following him, like, are you going into KROQ?
And he's like, yeah, you know, I'm filling the vending machine or something.
And I was like, could you tell him there's a boxing coach waiting by the elevators?
And I'll just wait by the elevators.
Just go tell anyone in there there's a boxing coach.
And he's like, yeah, all right.
And he just went in.
And I just stood by the elevator for like 20 minutes or something.
And at some point, Jimmy just came down the hall, same direction the guy went.
And he just kind of walked up to me.
I was probably doing the morning show.
He's probably in the middle of doing the show.
And he's like, are you the boxing coach?
And I said, yeah.
And he said, OK.
And I was like, I could be your boxing coach.
And he's like, yeah, okay.
I was like, okay.
And he's like, when do you want to start?
And he's like, I don't know, today?
Later today?
After I'm done?
And I'm like, yeah, yeah, let's start.
How about noon at Bodies in Motion in Pasadena?
I'm like, okay, I'll meet you at the parking lot.
And I just stood there in the parking structure and he pulled up in a beat up RX-7.
It was really beat on and I was like, My Zuzu Trooper's nicer than this guy's RX-7.
I remember thinking, hmm, what if I want in on this?
But I was like, I got three weeks to train this guy, and all I want to do is pick his brain about how he got into radio and how he got into comedy.
Now, he's Not high up the food chain at K-Rock.
Right.
So he kind of does some writing, does some producing, does some editing, and does his sports bit, but he's not Kevin Irvine or Frank Murphy, the producer.
So he's not going to be able to march in there and go, hey fellas, new plan.
This guy's, you know, like he's nothing.
So, but, but we just keep talking about comedy and comedy, comedy, comedy.
And he kind of realizes that I have some, some ability beyond boxing for, for comedy.
And he, he does the fight.
He loses the fight.
I send him out for the second round with no mouthpiece.
I remember his mouthpiece was still in my hand when he was like boxing.
It was a weird, like, did I bring an extra mouthpiece?
So after the fight, he goes, well, like, no, Now we're kind of done, you know?" And I was like, yeah, well, what could I do, you know?
And he said, he said, well, what do you, what do you do?
Like, what do you want to do?
And I was like, I don't really know.
And I said, well, what I do is, is I, I hang out a crack wise, fast on my feet, and I just kind of roll with it.
And he said, Yeah, Kevin and Bean, that's their job.
They don't need you doing that.
So I was like, well, what could I do?
And he said, come up with a character and you could call in like Monday morning and it's probably never going to work and they'll never want to hear it again.
But that's the only shot you got.
And I was like, I don't really do characters.
And he's like, well, Come up with something.
Well, we'll get to that in one second.
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Okay, so what character did you end up coming up with for Kay Rock?
I remember I had the weekend and I was like, the gay movie reviewer, you know?
And I was like, I don't know.
Like, I don't think I could do that.
Like, I'm not, I never did characters.
So I was like, wait a minute.
I started thinking like, I always had this thought of sort of go for what you know, like, what do you know?
And I was like, well, I know Carpentry really well.
And then I was like, Okay.
I've always talked about how every shop teacher I ever had was horrible.
Ironically, they loved wood, but they hated kids.
My shop teachers at Walter Reed Elementary looked at the shop as their shop, and we were bothering them.
Like, what are you doing in my shop?
Get away from my table saw.
It's not yours, old man.
You're here to teach us how to use the table saw.
Get away from my drill index.
That's my idea.
See Walter Reed, I'd go back.
I went to middle school there, too.
And Mr. Gage, and Mr. Martin, and Mr. Schapanzi, Mr. Walters.
I was like a shop teacher.
A shop teacher who taught remedial wood at Louis Pasteur Middle School in Monrovia.
And his name was Mr. Birch.
Because birch is a kind of wood, and I played Pop Warner football with a guy named Bircham.
And I just thought, that's a cool name.
It also smells like wood, you know?
But then I was like, why would Mr. Bircham call K-Rock in the morning?
I was looking, I was approaching it like I was a groundling, you know?
I was like, what is his motivation for calling K-Rock?
And his motivation would always be, that he was injured in the shop over the weekend.
He wasn't coming in Monday morning to school, because I'd call it like 7.15.
And I'd say, I know all these kids listen to your crappy music, like they love smashing dumplings and nervosa and all your crappy hippie music.
And they're listening now on their clock radios, like their alarm clock radios.
So I was like, let me yell at them.
And I would get on the phone and I would go, now listen to me!
You're going to get Mr. Hensley.
He's going to come in there with a sweater vest from HOMAC.
He's going to substitute.
So I'd make some gay jokes about him.
And I'd go, nobody's doing anything.
He's going to fire up the Duquesne projector.
We're putting blood on the bandsaw on.
You guys are all going to ride out the rest of the class.
Just put your head on the desk.
Nobody's touching any tools or anything.
And I would go, except for Brad Higginstar.
There was always one student they liked.
You know what I mean?
Brad, listen to me.
I would start talking to Brad.
And I'd be like, so help me, God, if I come back there tomorrow and someone got into my drill index or my Makita calendar, I'm going to be ripped, you know.
And then I would tell Brad how to, like, go through.
Like, I was thinking about a dovetail joint, but maybe a finger joint.
But also, I don't want to do a butt joint, Brad.
Let's do a dado.
Oh, no, let's do a rabbit.
Okay, Brad, take the dado set up and put it on.
Move the Biesemeyer fence, set up the dado on the table saw, and I just start getting into this crazy nailing schedule on sheer wall and stuff like that.
And the character was huge.
Because everyone thought he's actually a guy.
And so they used to start, they'd have me come in, The studio and like people call up and go like, I want to make a playhouse for my kid or something like that.
I'd go.
Treated bottom plate, two by four, 16 on center, that's your layout.
Double top plate, you know, use a 16 penny sinker, but don't use sinkers when you're cheer walling, use like a 10 penny ring shank, because a sinker's vinyl code's gonna come out.
Or you could nail it off with eight penny sinkers, make sure it's struck one, you know, CDX, half inch, good one side, put the label out if you're getting inspected.
And I, and then they go like, how does he know What this stuff is, you know?
And so people were sort of intrigued that this guy was like funny, but he also, every time someone called in, they'd go like, a roofer came to the house and he said that some of the metal on it, drip edge?
No, no.
Weep screed?
Yeah, weep screed.
Like, they'd be like, well, wait a minute, how'd you know what he said?
Because I'm picturing myself on a roof and weep screed.
So it caught on.
I got signed by William Morris.
I became this sort of local celebrity.
I immediately got offers and stuff like that.
I got a manager and just the bittersweet, weird circle this is then about two years into it, maybe even a year and a half into it, stuff happened immediately.
Once I got on KROQ, it just happened fast.
I get this call from my manager and he's like, hey, I got a call from Marjorie Grossman's Brother.
And I said, what?
Why?
And he said, because he's, he's getting, he's taking, getting her affairs in order or whatever.
And I said, what happened?
Oh, she died of like ovarian cancer a few months ago.
I was like, oh really?
Yeah.
And her brother is going through all her stuff and her brother wants to know why there's a check for $1,200 to Adam Parola.
Because her brother knew who Adam Carolla was.
She wrote me a check for Adam Carolla, the comedian, but she wrote a check to Adam Carolla, the carpenter, and I remember it was like, literally yesterday, I was envying her life.
I was like, oh God, you got a new house, you got entertainment, you're working, and then she just died like that, and now I've got my manager, and Willie Morris, and blah, blah, blah, and I was like, God, life's pretty interesting tapestry.
Yeah, so you ended up obviously becoming huge on radio, and then eventually you decided to launch a pirate ship of your own.
And so we can fast forward to that.
Yeah, we're fast forwarding.
Yeah, exactly.
So how did that come about?
How did you decide, you know, I'm done with radio, I'm not doing terrestrial anymore, now I want to do this podcasting thing that nobody had really tried successfully to that point, but you spotted a market before there even was a market, and now the rest of us get to make a living in it.
Yeah, where's my vig?
Come on, can't I at least wet my feet?
I'm not asking, I'm not the government, but 10% is kind of a standard tithing.
We, all right, I never thought of, I've never thought about anything in advance other than move forward.
Like, I'm kind of like, You know, I've always kind of looked at it as like, hey, we're in the middle of the ocean.
Look toward the horizon or look toward wherever you think land is and just start swimming.
And then, like, somebody would keep saying, like, where are you going or what island you're shooting for?
And I'm going, I don't know.
I'm just I'm just going that way.
And they'd go, well, how do you know there's...
And I'm like, well, the alternative is just kind of treading water out here until we're consumed by sharks.
So I'm like, let's just go.
So I always assumed in radio that I would get thrown off of radio for saying something stupid, and then I'd go get another job somewhere else.
It was like, well, I'll get cut for this team for getting into it with the coach, but I'm a good ball player and I'll just get picked up by this other team.
But I didn't know the league was going to collapse.
And what happened in '08, '09 with my radio is sort of the league collapsed.
Like there was no more guys getting paid a lot of bucks to give their opinions on the FM side.
So it all, the FM side just completely went to music and playlists and no DJs and somebody figured out like why are we paying these guys hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to do this when we just do a program.
So there was no more work.
And I had this, I had two young kids and a pretty good lifestyle in terms of like mortgage and a warehouse and you know, a couple of cars.
And like, I had a kind of big monthly nut and no job.
And I was getting paid for like nine months to the end of my contract.
So I was just like, I did not believe in podcasting per se because there wasn't any model for podcasting in terms of revenue generation.
So my thing was like, look, after all the work that I did Which would literally be like, go to that apartment, get on the roof, and scrape the tar paper off it.
I was like, that's work.
Talking is something you do with a friend at lunch that is one of the most enjoyable endeavors.
Like, what's better than you having lunch with a guy you just love to talk to?
You know, like you and I, we love Dennis Prager.
Going out to dinner with Dennis Prager, that's two hours of talk, but that's, you'd pay for that.
So I was like, I never want to look at talking as a job.
I also have built this audience over the years and I don't want to have my tether come unmoored and float out somewhere and then come back and see if I can get them gathered up and into the tent again.
Well, I knew we had many millions of minutes of streaming every month, but the radio station and their sort of infinite wisdom was like, they'd come in and they'd go, you guys are number five in Los Angeles.
You got to get into the top three.
Oh, and you had 19 million minutes of streaming last month.
I'd go, well, that's good for something, right?
And they'd go, no, it's not.
And then they'd leave.
But I kept going literally like 19 million minutes of streaming in a month.
I'd go, It's gotta be something, right?
So that thought, as well as getting paid for 10 months to stay home, essentially, I was just like, well, let's start podcasting.
And it really has changed everything.
I mean, everybody, I had Joe Rogan in here a few weeks ago and we were talking about you and he was crediting you as the guy who kind of realized that there was another continent out there that nobody else knew was out there.
And obviously that's happened for For a huge number of us.
It's also created an enormous amount of liberty in the space because being on radio, you did radio a lot longer than I did, but I did radio too.
There's always this fear that you're going to say the one thing and then the one thing will get you fired and it will finish your career.
And for you it's a lot harder because you're in comedy.
And now, I mean, I was going to ask you this from the beginning.
How do you do comedy in an era of political correctness?
Because it seems like everybody is getting slaughtered right now.
Every comedian.
Yeah.
gets to a certain point and then the knife the long knives just come out if you make the wrong jokes jokes unless you are properly woke or you're you're amy schumer and you're just going to make a bunch of feminist jokes or something they can say whatever you want but if you're anybody else i mean you're a white dude who's relatively conservative on politics or at least is perceived that way and that means the knives come out so how do you how do you deal with that you know it's it's kind of interesting
but i i do feel like they do as much as they think they can get meaning i've had plenty of that in my my career i think if the attitude is i I don't apologize, I don't care.
Attacking me is not gonna be satisfying for you.
There needs to be every, I was just talking about this on my podcast, which is, I used to fight in the street a fair bit.
Not a lot, but I definitely had some street fights.
And I knew how to fight.
And I was just like, I don't know, 22, and I was like, I would fight.
And I always knew I wasn't a mean person and I would not pick a fight with anybody.
But I knew if somebody wanted to fight, I knew exactly how to get them out into the street with me to fight.
Like, we want to leave this party and we will go fight.
I would tell them I don't want to fight.
I don't want trouble.
Like, I really don't want trouble.
And their answer would be, oh, you found trouble.
And I'd go, yeah, but I'm really, I'm kind of a mellow guy.
And I just, I'm sorry if I stepped on your foot or something in the kitchen, but I don't.
And they'd be like, yeah, well, this is a bad day for you.
And I'd go, OK, well, I guess we got to fight.
And we'd go fight.
And I'd beat him up.
But all I had to do was take a step or two backwards, and they took too big step forward.
If you step forward, they don't step forward.
They realize it's no fun going after Adam Carolla.
It's much better getting this guy fired, or that guy fired, or this guy.
The people issue the long-winded sort of Crafted by their publicists, apologies and all.
It's like it's so much better.
And really all you do is you just kind of tell them to shove off a couple of times and they just kind of go like, all right, he's no good.
Like he's no good because he doesn't issue these long-winded apologies.
So there's like that.
And I'm also just, at a certain point, you will be who you are.
Like, no, Howard Stern can say whatever he wants whenever he wants, and no one ever demands that Howard Stern apologize, because Howard Stern is Howard Stern.
Or it's my Snoop Dogg can smoke weed wherever he wants.
So if I went into like an AIDS hospice, I couldn't spark up.
Snoop Dogg could fire up a hookah pipe in the middle of an AIDS hospice and they'd be like, that's no, that's fine.
He's Snoop Dogg.
You know what I mean?
Like he literally can smoke pot wherever he wants because he's Snoop Dogg.
So once you establish yourself as I'm the person who says things that offend people, They sort of leave you alone.
You, we've said, I've said a couple times on the show, you're not ostensibly political.
You found yourself in this sort of circle where you have friends on the left, obviously, like you're still good friends with Jimmy Kimmel, but then you're also very good friends with Dennis Prager.
You and I are friendly.
So why is it, do you think, that you've been embraced by the right when you're really sort of, you consider yourself sort of an apolitical dude?
Well, you know, it's weird.
People say, oh, you're conservative, you're right-wing, or whatever.
I said, well, go back and listen to Loveline, the non-political radio show from 1997, where I'd go, look, family, education, people shouldn't be having kids who can't afford kids.
Families need to stay together.
They need to raise these kids.
They need to have these crazy right-wing Notions now that no one ever thought of as political.
That was political like wash the whites with the whites and the colors with the colors.
Like it was just that's how you do laundry.
Like this is how you become successful.
You stay together.
You raise your kids.
You don't buy things you can't pay for.
You don't rely on the government.
The government's not going to do a good job taking care of you.
You have to do it yourself.
Delayed gratification.
Whatever.
All the stuff I learned through, quite frankly, this little microcosm called North Hollywood High is a very interesting combination of different of different folks, different ethnicities, and different whatever.
I was in North Hollywood High.
We had the Jewish kids from Studio City, the Hills, Hebrew Heights, as it is called, and they would come down to North Hollywood High.
That was their high school.
And, you know, there was Jeff Buck and Nate Wittenberg and Robbie Levine and all these kind of guys.
And they're like, their family stayed together and they were in student council and they did well in their schoolwork and stuff like that.
And...
And then there was like white trash dudes like me from literally right next to the high school in North Hollywood, my buddy Ray and Chris and stuff like that.
And then we had some Mexican guys who were like from a little deeper from the valley and some black guys who were like bust in from South Central because I played football with all those guys.
And at a certain point, When North Harvard High was done, I say done because like my friends, some of them didn't graduate or they just moved on or they wandered off and had jobs.
The Jewish kids like went off to UCLA and Stanford and Cal.
The black kids just went back to the hood and the white trash and the Mexican guys hung out and got jobs digging ditches.
And so I was like, hmm, what's the through line here?
And it's like, well, all my friends, their parents were divorced.
They were living in apartments.
They weren't into education.
They were hands-off.
We were just sort of warehouse.
Nobody was doing homework or whatever.
So I put together this composite very quickly of what works and what doesn't work just based on this Petri dish called North Hollywood High and how these folks went off to be successful and we went off to toil in the sun.
So I understood that and I always preached it.
And no one ever accused me of being political for many of the notions I had about just sort of self-reliance, you know?
My mom got welfare and food stamps, and she was a mess, and the house was a mess, and we barely got by, and it was a bad life, and she was like hobbled by it, and she doesn't know, she's not...
You know, she doesn't have spina bifida, and she's not a moron.
She just never knew what she could do.
Just like I never knew what I could do until the radio station fired me.
Like, I needed to be pushed out, and if the radio station... I would have worked there for a thousand years.
So, all of a sudden, these things have become political stances, which is... it's kind of confusing to me, and I'm not really into arguing about, you know, who does a better job.
Like, look, It's also a weird world where you can't speak logically to people.
I've had a million... Some of the stuff I get thrown back in my face is like, look, if something happens to me and my wife, I'd like a mom and a dad, a male and a female, to raise my kids, because we both offer very different things.
But, that being said, I will take the lesbian couple or the gay couple who's doing a little better, who has a better minivan that's a little newer and a little safer, who lives in a better part of town with a better school system, I will take them over the heterosexual couple if they're marginally better.
If everything is exactly the same, This is weird world we live in.
It's like everything's the same.
I'll give them the male and the female because traditionally I figured out through nature that works a little better.
And everyone's like, oh, so you don't think a gay couple should be able to raise?
Like, no, that's not what I said.
And then they do this one, which is always insane.
And I wonder this out loud all the time.
And I'm going to pose this question to you because I believe I have to be intellectually honest.
One of the biggest problems I got into is when somebody said to me, who's funnier, men or women?
I didn't think I was allowed to say they're both exactly the same.
I had to answer the question.
I said men are funnier because they're trying to get laid.
But so they've evolved that way.
Think about all that.
All we've put into getting laid.
But also, I said that being said, I know plenty of women that are funnier than every guy I went to high school with.
But if you're just going to ask me, I'll go with men.
And I got a ton of crap for that.
But here's what I don't get.
Every time I say to somebody, look, All things being equal, I'll take the heterosexual couple.
Now, if the gay couple's doing a little better, and their tax returns and lives in a safe neighborhood, I'll take the gay couple.
And then they go, alright, so you're saying...
The heterosexual couple could be strung out on meth, and they could, the woman is, she's a full-time prostitute.
He's pimping her out.
They're cooking up, they're making meth in their bathtub of their apartment, which by the way, is in a very dangerous part of town.
And the gay couple, that's David Geffen, and he's out on a yacht in San Francisco.
You would take, and I said, no.
I think I was insanely clear.
I said, all things are the same.
All things are the same, I would take this.
But if the other couple, then they go, well, that's a flawed premise because you can't make everything the same.
And I'm like, just make them have the same job, live in the same neighborhood.
I don't know, some may think one guy likes Jeopardy, the other likes Desperate Housewives or something, but just make everything the same, would you?
They're like, no.
Are these people stupid?
When they say to me, so you would take this couple that raises rabies-infested raccoons in their camper, in their double wide, over David Gama.
No!
But why did you say that?
Why would you say- like, are they insane?
Are they intellectually dishonest?
Are they lying?
Like, I can't- and where do they expect me to go?
Right.
Oh, you caught me.
Like, I said the same.
Everything's gotta be the same.
I do think that they're looking for a world in which- they need an answer.
And the answer is always going to be that it's their political viewpoint or you have a character flaw.
And so if you do not repeat their political viewpoint, then it must be that you have a character flaw.
And that character flaw means that secretly, even though you've already said this stuff, secretly you do believe that the rabies-infested double-eyed with the heterosexual couple is better than David Geffen because your secret motivation is that you like gay people worse than you like straight people.
You like straight people more than you like gay people.
And so even if you say all things being equal, deep down in your heart, you know secretly that what this is really coming from is animus for gay people.
I think that's really what it is.
Because having spoken with more people on the left than anybody that I know in my lifetime, it seems to me that when people are being intellectually dishonest that way, and you see it with Cathy Newman and Jordan Peterson, for example, where Jordan Peterson is talking about earnings and Cathy Newman is suddenly just recasting everything that he's saying, she knows what he's saying.
It's just that she doesn't believe that that's really his motivation in saying it.
It's them attempting to read your heart, I think.
Right, right.
So if you're comfortable, It goes back to what you were saying earlier.
If you're comfortable in who you are, it's hard for them to come back at you because they want to say that you're homophobic or you're racist or something.
You say, well, I'm not that.
And they don't have any place to go from there.
For them, that's the only place that they can go.
Because if they acknowledge that you have a, like, I'm sure Jimmy doesn't say that to you.
You said the same thing because Jimmy knows you're a good guy, right?
It's people who don't know you're a good guy and who think you're a bad guy who are going to attribute that motivation to you.
And Jimmy's as left as it comes, right?
Yeah.
I mean, he has old-fashioned values as well, which don't necessarily come out on stage.
He definitely is a family man.
He's super loyal.
He has basic old-school, traditional... I don't know what's political, what's not political anymore, but he's very family-oriented.
He's more religious than I am, and I got everyone beat, because I'm like at a zero.
I don't know if I got them beat in the wrong direction, but anyway.
We'll find out later.
And he's very loyal and he's very honest.
He has all the qualities that you would want, that the grandparents would want their kids to date.
No, the only point that I'm making is that he's politically different than you are, but he's not attributing these bad motivations to you, so I would say that typically, and the same thing is true, you know, for people who I deal with.
I have friends who are on the political left, and if they don't spend their days misaligning, you know, misattributing character to me, then I know that they're a decent person.
Like, it seems to me that it's always been about decency.
Yeah, well, it's also, I think part of the, I mean, part of the problem, I mean, I have this, I've always had this sort of theory, which is like, all roads lead to narcissism.
And if you can hop on the line on Twitter and say, what happened to Cecil the Lion is a tragedy and it should never happen again and it's not going to happen on my watch or something, then you get to just send out to the heavens that you're a virtuous person.
And the way to So there's two ways.
If I make $50,000 a year, there's two ways I can get a raise.
One way is work harder and make $75,000 next year.
There's two ways I can get a raise.
One way is work harder and make 75 grand next year.
The next way is push you down from 50 to 25.
And thus, I just got a raise in my mind.
Now it's a horrible math and it's not a way to get yourself any further down the road.
But if my personality, if my virtue is a seven and yours is a seven, if I can knock you down to a three or minus two, then guess who gets to be at the top of virtue mountain?
And that'll be me.
So I think a lot of it is narcissism that's being disguised as some sort of caring out loud, like caring from the mountaintops.
I was talking to my wife the other day, because she's like, what's with everybody and their stupid tweets about, I weep for the kids on the border and stuff like that.
And it's like, it's fine to be upset about kids on the border, but then go down to the border or write a check to one of the many charitable institutions that are helping those kids on the border.
But you don't need to send it.
I don't need to know how you feel about what's going on at the border or Cecil Line or anything else.
And I was like, my last tweet, I think my wife got mad about this, but my last tweet was, I told everyone, don't do it in your kid's sink, but you can whiz in your sink if you're tall enough.
Sorry, Ben.
One of the great time savers of life is like brushing your teeth and whizzing in your sink.
And somebody tweeted me, it turns out you can save millions of gallons of water and they're showing this thing where it's like there's a sink where it's like you pee into it and you wash your hands and it washes the whatever.
I tweeted back, yes, I'm a hero.
And then somebody tweeted back, yeah, but you don't wash your hands, so it wouldn't work.
And I was like, true.
So my tweet, now I'm coming across like a hero on Ben Shapiro's show, but I mean, my tweet was a self-deprecating, not here's what we should do at the border and things need to change.
I think a lot of it I think almost all roads lead to narcissism in almost every department, and this is why we're hearing so much of this.
And then also, it was considered sort of gauche to put your opinions out all the time for everyone to read.
You're virtuous.
I mean, again, if you're making fun of yourself for whizzing in the sink, Fine.
Zero.
Well, it's always a pleasure to have Adam Carolla here again, the godfather of podcasting and also a man with a great many tips about where you should whiz.
So you get the information and the company from Adam Carolla.
We'll get you an Apple box and you can join the crowd.
Perfect.
Thank you so much.
It's always what I've been looking for.
We'll see you next time.
Adam, thanks so much for stopping by.
I appreciate it.
Appreciate it.
The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is produced by Jonathan Hay, executive producer Jeremy Boring, associate producers Mathis Glover and Austin Stevens, edited by Alex Zingaro.
Audio is mixed by Mike Caromina.
Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera, and title graphics by Cynthia Angulo.
The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.
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