Adam Carolla and Joe Rogan dissect Hollywood’s shift from sitcoms to reality TV, exposing how stars like Ray Romano now grind in small venues after losing fame. Carolla’s 2009 radio job loss forced him into chaotic stand-up, while Rogan shares Phil Hartman’s tragic downfall—murdered by his wife amid industry pressures. They debate comedian suicide rates and Carolla’s $500K patent troll lawsuit, which the podcast community rallied against, though he dismisses it as a distraction. Clashing on capitalism, Carolla insists success depends on effort, not systemic fairness, while Rogan counters with inequality’s structural roots, urging listeners to focus on self-improvement over envy. [Automatically generated summary]
I started to realize, after I had my twins, that what I did was radio, podcasting, but I felt like it was all just floating up into the ether, you know?
And I thought, I want some sort of permanent record, like some sort of legacy.
You know, books, movies, the stuff that gets passed around.
You know, what I'm saying is, over Christmas time, me and my eight-year-old twins, we watch planes, trains, and automobiles and love the shit out of it.
It's almost like, yeah, you get like a seed is growing, it starts poking out through the dirt, and you're like, all right, we got to do something here.
What I would do is, you know, I'd walk through Kirkland, Washington, and I'd see, oh, they have little flags that they use that go in a little receptacle, and when you cross the street, even at a signal in a crosswalk, you hold the little flag up.
And then you go set it back down in the receptacle on the other side of the street.
Yeah, so I would blow into every town and just look around with a buck slip and go, like, flying over there.
Okay, what's going on?
And by the half of it was, oh, the Alaskan Airline flight out here.
You know, just anything.
Just anything.
And then once I hit the stage, I could riff on it.
But after, you know, obviously...
After what started happening is then, you know, next week in Phoenix, I'd go, you guys got a nice town, but let me tell you about Kirkland, Washington.
They got flags to cross, you know, and then I could do the same 10 minutes again.
There's a lot of guys who wind up doing that that are sitcom actors that wound up Doing stand-up after they became a sitcom actor, like Screech from Saved by the Bells, particularly famous for it.
Recently and maybe dead went out in like the wilderness and like killed himself Someone's gonna have to do some skippy research I think you might be confusing skippy with the guy who killed the the development deal that we were talking about earlier Chicken, do you know that story?
No, you don't know what killed the development deal.
No there Montreal especially the Montreal Comedy Festival was this big event Where all the industry would go there, and it was really kind of an excuse to go drink.
This was like every comic, I mean every comic, was like, what the fuck?
Like, you'll get comics that'll defend the most undefendable, you know, you mean there's a lot of comics that, you know, love all sorts of weird marginal acts, but this guy was off the charts.
Off the charts bad.
Off the charts bad, but...
Got a giant development deal, like a half a million dollars.
Larry the Cable Guy was a stand-up that wasn't getting any traction, just became this guy on the radio in Tampa or something.
The next thing you know, the club would rather book Larry the Cable Guy than Dan Whitney.
Than Dan Whitney, so they go with Larry the Cable Guy.
I started off doing Mr. Burcham, the shop teacher, out here, and at a certain point, when it came time to take over on Loveline, K-Rock, the mother station, was like, we'd like you to host Loveline as Mr. Burcham.
The woodshop teacher.
And I was like, how's that going to work?
And they were like, well, we know Mr. Burcham is funny, but we're not sure if you're funny.
Which is a weird thing to say to the same guys doing both of them.
But I said, if I do Mr. Burcham on Loveline, I'm going to blow my voice out.
Every Monday, he would call into Kevin and Bean because he got into another accident in the garage, you know, with the bandsaw or something, and he wasn't going to be making it in.
So you'd say, well, why is this guy calling Kevin and Bean to tell him he's not coming in to teach his shop class that day?
And what I'd figured out is that all of his kids...
Who attended his class because it was junior high.
They all listened to K-Rock.
So he would use K-Rock as like his own PA system to speak to his kids like at 7.30 in the morning because they're all heading in.
And, you know, he'd be like...
Listen, I know you love all the smashing dumplings and nervosa and all that shit K-Rock plays.
That Quimby, Mr. Sapanze, is going to be taking over for me today.
So here's the deal.
You're all going to show up, we're going to put blood on the bandsaw on, and then you put your head down.
And nobody messes with my drill index.
Nobody messes with my Makita posers.
And then he'd get into, like...
His one student that he liked.
Because all asshole shop teachers always overcompensate with the one kid.
I just said, look, this is not going to work big picture.
Like, I could do one episode this way, but you don't want Mr. Bertram two hours a night every night.
Plus, we were just starting syndication, so we're only in one city that kind of knew Mr. Bertram, and then the rest of the cities didn't know Mr. Bertram, so it wouldn't have made sense.
Yeah, I... God, I remember a million years ago when I was doing Bill Simmons' podcast from his garage.
He was set up but like only set up with one microphone or that's all they could do so I had to call into the show but I was there So I literally got his phone, like his home phone, and dialed in and then stood out in the driveway, you know, so he didn't hear me in the room.
My god explain what the lawsuit was about because if people want to pull their fucking hair out in traffic This is so it's so crazy that someone could actually pull you into court for this Well not only pull you into court but pull you into their court in You know Eastern, Texas.
Yeah, where nobody has a podcast Yeah, nobody even knows what it is.
And they're not there to upset their own apple cart, you know what I mean?
Like, in terms of reform and rules and righting a wrong and all that kind of stuff, how much you want to piss off the guy you're going to the country club with?
You'll see him at the country club on Saturday.
You know what it is?
It's like divorce attorneys.
Divorce attorneys, you think, oh, it's your side and his side and they're battling and he said and she said.
Not the attorneys.
They love it.
They're basically the relationship.
It's like saying, you know, the guy's walking through the park with the stick and the nail in the end of it, picking up garbage, picking up trash.
That guy must really hate litterers.
It's like, no, he doesn't.
That's how he has a job.
The attorneys are the ones that all end up just...
At the end, I mean, I've not been divorced, but I've certainly heard enough.
And I talked to Dr. Drew who's not been divorced, but he's heard enough.
And it's like, at the end, the people that win are both sides' attorneys.
They just keep going until everything's cleaned out.
Well, not only that, if you're a person who's getting divorced, understand this.
If you're gonna go through mediation or whatever, even if you get along well with your ex-wife and you guys are both like, look, we love each other, but this is not working out.
Let's just break up.
The attorneys will try to get your wife to ask for some really unreasonable shit so that you can settle on some reasonable shit.
And so you're gonna get angry at her unreasonable shit.
Like, no, you can't have my fucking collection of, you know, whatever.
You know, like, I... I know, like, Sugar Shane Mosley had to give up his fucking championship belt.
You understand that?
He lost his fucking championship belt to a girl that he used to have naked hugs with, you know?
They used to get together and they used to touch each other and make each other feel good, so the judge decided, well, you know what, you need to give up that belt that you got punched in the head for, to this woman that used to touch you.
We're just going to handle this and try to be reasonable about it.
And she'll go, you don't understand.
You could be burned.
You're going to need to be.
Just meet with him.
I'm just saying, just meet with him.
Just meet with the guy.
That's all I'm saying.
Just talk to the guy.
Next thing you know, she's sitting in an office in Century City.
This guy, of course, just sees a big old slab of bacon coming his way.
And he's like, oh, listen.
He says this and he says that, but what about 10 years from now?
He could agree to do this, but if he just agrees to it and you guys just have a handshake, he'd pull the plug the next day on child support, blah, blah, blah, alimony, blah, blah, blah.
And you worked real hard.
And the next thing you know, she's got an attorney.
But when he was talking about it, I was the one who was trying to tell him to get divorced a long time ago.
Like, he had gone through these breakups where he'd moved out and then moved back in and, you know, they'd fight like cats and dogs and like, fuck this, I'm done.
And, you know...
A few people were saying, you know, you should try to work it out, and I was like, man, you gotta get, she's evil.
No, you can't fix crazy, and you can't fix that broken actress thing.
Do you know the type of person that desperately wants to be famous, and then they're medicated?
So she was on Zoloft, and then on top of the Zoloft, she's doing cocaine.
Which literally makes you psychotic.
They want a settlement through Zoloft.
The family want a settlement.
Oh, really?
Zoloft, apparently, you know, obviously I'm talking out of my ass.
I'm not a doctor.
I'm not a scientist.
But the word from people that have taken it is that if you take Zoloft and you mix it with some other chemicals, you can just lose your fucking marbles.
And one of the big ones is cocaine.
If you do Zoloft and cocaine together, you're just off the rails fucking crazy.
And that's when she shot him and then wound up shooting herself.
But when I was talking to him about it, I was like, man, just get out.
Just give her half.
Just give her half.
Fuck it, man.
You're going to make more money.
And he goes, but it's not half.
He goes, it's a fucking third.
He goes, the third goes to the lawyers.
He goes, it's two thirds you give to them.
You give a lawyer a third.
The wife gets a third.
It's a fucking third to the lawyers.
And he was going crazy, but it's a fucking scam!
Like, you could see his eyes were red, his face was sweaty.
He was just thinking about all the years that this guy...
I mean, he didn't make it.
Like, really make it.
I don't think he got on Saturday Night Live until he was in his late 30s.
What they found was, you know, and I've had this happen, but it's like, you know, it's this weird thing where it's like, hey man, what's with all the shit talking?
And it's like, hey man, what's with all the suing?
To this day, I couldn't really explain it other than to say, if you made a playlist, somehow they had some sort of proprietary technology of a list or playlist.
I mean, but it is the kind of thing where it's like, yeah, yeah, there's a side where, okay, you're getting out there, you're talking about it, and all that, and that's fine.
But it's just this sort of thing where, as an atheist, with X amount of hours on the planet...
Reading emails from lawyers from Eastern Texas, it's just not on my, you know, getting phone calls, you know, I'm shooting a show for Spike and the phone's ringing, it's an update out of Texas, you know, it's like, I'm trying to do this other thing.
Ex-fighters, most of them fighters that weren't that successful, like weren't like championship caliber or, you know, got to a point in their career where they realized, you know, hey, I'm not really ever going to get rich off of this and then started suing and became a part of this, you know, class action lawsuit.
I've always said there was a time in this country when if you saw a guy driving a brand new Cadillac and, you know, the father and son were walking down the street and here comes Mr. Johnson and his big black Cadillac going up to the top of the hill, there was a time when the father would look at the son and say, you study hard, you work hard, you get it done, and one day you can have big shiny Cadillac and live up at the top of the hill.
Now, smash cut to 2015, the son's looking at the dad going, what the fuck does he have that Cadillac, and we're driving a Isuzu Trooper.
This is bullshit.
Let's go throw a rock at that guy's Cadillac, or let's go see what we can get from Mr. Johnson.
See, there's a mentality of, you and I have the mentality of, and it's what this country was basically settled on, which is, go get some for yourself.
We have a larger and larger group looking around going, wait a minute, what are they doing, and how can I get some of what they got?
You know, this whole country is, but it's a whole mentality.
I mean, it's trickling down from the government.
It's sort of a slow poisoning.
You know, it's this sort of, you know, income inequality.
What the people would say, who we vehemently disagree with, is that guy on the construction site can't Get to the next level and can't get off that construction site because his dad carried drywall and he's poor.
And he's a product of the system and he's a product of the education around him and he's a product of that environment.
Which may not help.
It's obviously much better, you know, Dr. Drew's dad was a physician and it definitely helped Dr. Drew become a physician.
But my dad didn't do shit, and I got more money than Dr. Drew, so what math shall we do here?
There's a lot of people that figure things out in this world.
They figure out a way.
And some people don't figure it out.
And that's the same with playing games.
Like, there's some people that are really good at playing chess.
Why are they really good at playing chess?
Well, they study it and they figure it out and they get better at it.
And then other people fucking suck at it.
But they're also playing chess.
But they're playing chess and they're not thinking ahead, they're not focusing, they're not concentrating.
They might be distracted while they're playing that chess.
Life, when it comes to capitalism, when it comes to, I mean, forget capitalism, when it comes to trying to, let's use that phrase, get ahead.
It's a game.
It's a game.
And what you decide to do, whether you decide to build houses, or you decide to make paintings, or you decide to fix cars, whatever the fuck you decide to do, you're essentially playing a game.
The game is, I will try to get really good at this, and hopefully I'll get some money along the way.
And if you do not play the game, and you decide, I'm just going to stick to this whole digging thing, and, uh, why don't I have a Cadillac?
I'm not, I'm fucking digging this thing, I'm, I'm working all day!
No, our kind of fun was get in the back of a F-150 pickup, and we're going to Baja, and we're going to buy some roadside fireworks and shoot them off out the back of the pickup truck and camp on the beach and surf naked and start a bonfire and drink some mezcal tequila.
And there's a lot of people that only focus on money, and they wind up being rich and miserable.
And that is a fact.
But that doesn't mean that you can't...
Get freedom from money that relieves pressure.
And that's where people are mistaken, this idea that it's one or the other, that it's either or.
Either you are enjoying your life as a poor person, you're happy and wonderful and loving, or you're a wealthy miser who fucking hates his life and lives in depression and drinks himself to death.
Or takes pills to avoid reality.
That's not true either.
What money does do, the big thing that it did for me, when I first got my first, I got one of those development deals.
I got a few of those back in the day.
But I got one before the fucking, the water ran out.
And all of a sudden I didn't worry about my bills.
All of a sudden I had this huge feeling, like a physical feeling of like, do you ever work out with a weight vest?
And then how's the government going to figure that out?
And yeah, you can make the school system as even as you can, and you can make the law as even as you can, but the chick who's 6'1", who looks like Heidi Klum, still going to have a quite advantage over Alex Borstein.
Because she doesn't look like Uma Thurman, she went to work hard developing a bunch of other skills other than looking good on a Saturday night, and now makes a nice living.
Well, don't you think that's going to happen anyway?
I'm a hundred percent convinced that we're going to be able to manipulate people's bodies to the point where within a hundred years, we're going to be able to create, you know, whatever you want.
You could look like the thing from Fantastic Four.
You know, they're going to be able to do things to your body.
People are already doing weird body modifications, you know, putting like bolts in their heads and cutting the tips of their fucking noses off and weird shit just to look weird and interesting, tattooing their face up.
At a certain point, I remember well, it was like 1985, I was picking up garbage on a construction site, In Granada Hills, and a helicopter landed, and Donald Trump got out.
Man, they didn't like you talking shit about their corporation, their entity, their LLC. Imagine if you got some actual physical dudes, you could put their faces up on your website.
You know, as soon as everybody, not just me, but the community sort of band together, I was like...
As soon as they wanted me to stop, I realized it was sort of like punching a guy in the stomach and watching him wince, you know, like when you're sparring and go, oh, okay, I get it.
He's getting punched there again.
And so I doubled down, and at a certain point, they were like, you know, make it all go away, Mr. Wizard.
And that was it.
But...
It was, you know, it's tough, you know, and I understand.
It's sort of like, it's a lot like going through a divorce without getting divorced.
It's just a lot of, you know, why am I wasting all my time with this?
You know, why?
You know, there's a lot, I'll tell you what's going on, sort of on a micro and macro level, I think, in this country.
It's essentially being punished for being successful.
Like, I talk to my guys at work all the time, and I go, don't ever be successful, because you'll just get the shit kicked out of you.
Whenever you find, like, especially male or female, but you start talking to that successful celebrity dude, and you start talking to him about his sister...
Or his sisters or his brother.
Start scratching around a little bit.
Ask how that relationship's going.
Find out about the time that they sucked you into this business deal, never gave your money back, and by the way, are pissed at you.
Find about that time when your sister needed to borrow a little whatever, or you paid for a kid's private school for like three years, and then when you finally said, I can't pay for it anymore, she called you an asshole and stormed out of the room.
Just in general, see how those relationships are going.
Ask the successful one how good the relationship is with the brother that's not successful and see if it's not based on a lot of shit that the brother was asking from them from the point when they see the guy's name on the collar ID that they don't even want to pick up anymore.
Because they know it's just going to be him asking for something.
Well, people feel like they're just one deal away.
There's a friend that I have that I talk to every now and then, and I call him up, and I talked to him recently, and I called him up, and I was like, what's up, man?
How you doing?
And I wanted it to be, hey, everything's good, you know, blah, blah, blah, just doing this and doing that, and But immediately it was a fucking sales pitch for some new business that he wants to start.
And if I get involved, we're gonna make this amount of money and it can't go wrong because it's this and that.
And I mean, this guy is just ear beating the fuck out of me for like five minutes on the phone.
I go, dude, dude, dude, I'm not getting involved in anything.
Well, you don't even have to get involved.
Nope, I'm not doing it.
I go, listen, man, I'm fucking crazy busy.
I'm not getting in.
I just wanted to call to say hi.
Look, I'm telling you, man, you barely, you don't even have to know about this.
I go, I'll know.
I'll know, and it'll fuck with my head, and I'll know that it's out there.
But listen, you're going to be making money, free money, it's easy, I'm going to do all the work.
I don't think that it trickles down directly from the government.
What I'm saying is, first off, there's a mentality.
And the message should be, pick yourself up by your own fucking bootstraps.
That's what this whole country's been about.
Everybody has a story about a grandparent coming over here with three nickels in his pocket, working hard, and getting his shit together.
So that should be the message, number one.
Well, the playing field's not level, and there's wealth, income, you know.
Fuck that.
So first off is the message.
Get your shit together.
And work hard.
You'll be fine.
Doesn't matter what your ethnicity is.
Doesn't matter what your religion is.
Doesn't matter what your background is.
Just put it together and work hard.
And you're going to be working harder than Heidi Klum.
But English wasn't her first language either.
She figured it out along the way.
Now she's figured out how to make millions of dollars.
But first off, the message from the government should be that.
The second thing that's more direct that the government could do is...
Let's not make it so easy for everyone to sue anyone or take anything.
I mean, I'll give you for instance.
If you have a house and you're renting it out and some guy moves in and just decides to stop paying his rent, It's good luck getting the money from him.
The more conflict they can somehow or another write down in books, the more they can make it easier to sort of manipulate clauses and sue people for things like a serialized podcast on the internet.
Every new car you buy has a bunch of warning stickers that are hot glued to the sun visor, a bunch of buzzers and backup things, and a bunch of...
Deactivate the airbag buttons.
How much does that add to the average price of a car?
How much...
To the average flight is added to the ticket for just all the shit, all the insurance that the airline has to cover or that the car manufacturer has to cover or all the shit that's going to get people sued.
Think about just how much cheaper everything would be if everyone wasn't completely lawyered up and completely...
Trying to save themselves.
And think about all the stupid conversations and all the paperwork and how we've completely lost our humanity.
You know, the warehouse that I do my podcast from, when I bought that warehouse, there was a guy in it and he sold flooring.
And I bought it, but he had like nine, ten months left on his lease.
And I said to him, like, if you just bought a new warehouse and you're thinking, hey, I'd like to move, turns out my friends moved all their shit in, but I'd like to move some of my shit in or make a studio or something like that.
But a guy had a lease for like nine months.
So I talked to the guy.
And the guy said, well, you know, I am kind of looking for another place.
I'm thinking about buying a place.
And I said, well, as soon as you can find that place, tell me, because I'm anxious to get in here with my boys and get going and start building this place out.
And about three months later, he's like, I found another place.
And I said, fine, consider yourself out of your lease and have fun.
And he said, I'll be out by the 30th.
I said, absolutely.
And he said, I need you to sign this piece of paper.
And I said, what piece of paper?
And he said, the piece of paper that's releasing me from my lease.
And I said, we don't need a piece of paper.
I just looked in the eye and told you, you can leave.
And when you're ready to leave, you tell me.
And that's my word.
And he said, yeah, but sign the paper.
I said, what do we need a paper for?
We're two adults.
And I just told you, one adult to another, I can't wait to get in here.
I'm not going to let you.
It's not like you're going to leave and then I'm going to sue you for the next four months that you didn't.
I'm not that guy.
I'm the one who told you you could leave.
Now I shook your hand and you can leave.
And he said, you need to sign this release.
And I said, I'll tell you what, I'm not going to sign a release.
So you can either take my word as a man or you can just stay here for another four months.
What legally could have happened is I could have been many of the douchebags I've dealt with.
And I could have taken over the warehouse and then went and sent this guy a letter and said, hey man, you still have five months left on your lease and it's $3,300 or whatever.
That's $16,500.
If we've got to go to court, this is going to get expensive.
You know what?
I'll settle for $10,000.
And his lawyer probably would have said, you didn't get him to sign a release?
What are you, an imbecile?
You know what?
Just give him the 10. It's going to be a lot cheaper than paying me and going to court.
But what about, okay, to play devil's advocate or the argument against it, what about things like, you know the situation, I believe it was Chevrolet, had...
Some ignition issues that they knew about, where cars were cutting out, and it caused a bunch of deaths.
And a lot of people were aware of this issue, but they knew that a recall would be incredibly expensive, and they dragged their heels, and they didn't do anything about it for a long time, and now it's just a fucking complete disaster, and they're getting sued like crazy.
And I agree with you that there's definitely the mentality of going after successful people.
But obviously there's some successful people that are cunts and there's some successful people that have gotten there by ripping people off or by using slave labor in third world countries and charging them pennies on the dollar.
Things that could have been done in America with a reasonable wage.
There's a balance to all of it.
And it's for people that are listening to this, that are trying to form their own identity and carve their own path, the key is to not concentrate on other people and go, why them?
The key is to look at your own self and go, what do I want to do and how do I get there?