Lovett or Leave It - Flock Around and Find Out
Episode Date: August 28, 2026Meta ponies up the dough, Flock is for the birds, and Tim Curry shuffles off to that big Transexual, Transylvania in the sky. This week, Adam Mockler stops by to solve male loneliness, while Sona Mov...sesian brings down the gavel on all of our bosses. The Rant Wheel spins us through calorie counts, perimenopause, and men who really, really need to get outside once in a while. And we knock out the evening with a double-dose of Second Thoughts.Hate listening to ads? Become a Friends of the Pod subscriber for ad-free episodes of Pod Save America, Pod Save the World, Lovett or Leave It, Runaway Country, Offline with Jon Favreau, and more—plus exclusive content, including bonus episodes of Pod Save America. Subscribe now at crooked.com/friends, on Apple Podcasts, or through the Pod Save America YouTube channel.You can request a transcript by emailing transcripts@crooked.com. Include the podcast name, episode title, and air date. Please allow 48 hours for delivery.
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What's up, Los Angeles?
Welcome to Love It or Leave It.
I'm John Lovett.
And we cut the original joke that went here because it bombed.
And we've got a great show for you tonight.
But first, let's get into it.
What a week.
Turning Point USA just announced a nationwide university tour,
and I can't help but notice the name they've chosen for it,
America, Love It or Leave It.
it. So if anyone in here is confused and came to see Charlie Kirk, I have some bad news and
then some much worse news, but welcome. Meta on Wednesday agreed to pay $17 billion and impose
new safety rules as part of a settlement over claims that its social media platforms were
addictive and harmful to children and teens. Now a little alert will pop up when your child gets
and eating disorder.
Meta also agreed to other restrictions,
including a daily two-hour time limit
and a default ban on access to the apps late at night.
And if a teen wants to use Instagram to bully someone,
they'll have to first complete a CAPTCHA
to prove that they're actually cool.
The settlement also requires meta to block notifications
during school hours,
because we want to make sure nothing disturbs kids
in the classroom between active shooters.
Remember earlier when I said?
Mehta also that some of them might be dark.
That was one of the dark jokes we were talking about.
And then there's Flock, a tech company that has built a network of over 120,000 cameras
conducting 20 billion vehicle scans a month across 49 states.
If you do the math, that's every state but one.
But is there a downside to this vast network of cameras and sensors
in the hands of a private corporation?
No.
Yes.
Traffic cameras have exposed the ways
in which a subset of dangerous drivers
pose a risk to the entire community,
but Fox cameras aren't limited to tracking plates.
The company's AI technology
could potentially identify individuals
based on facial features, clothing, and wireless devices.
Over 50 police officers have been accused or charged
with misusing the technology,
including accessing camera data to stock their exes.
And the craziest part,
It worked. They got back together. She didn't realize how much he cared.
Federal immigration officials have used state and city police networks as part of an enforcement
operation in violation of state and local laws. One sheriff in Texas searched across 83,000
cameras for, quote, a female who had an abortion. Fortunately, the woman had taken the now
obligatory precaution of stocking up on abortion wigs. You're right about that one.
Block's CEO Garrett Langley went on Fox News this week to try and win over his critics, but did not exactly make a compelling case.
I value my privacy. My family values their privacy. My employees value their privacy.
But what we're talking about is safety as well. And so I think when people talk about just one of these, privacy or safety, they're prioritizing the wrong thing.
And what we have to prioritize as a country is compromise.
This is a classic argument, the idea that we must balance these two opposing needs, privacy and security.
It's the same one we heard from the Bush administration after 9-11.
But much like the official explanation for Tower 7's collapse,
I'm not buying it.
The Constitution's protections against violations of privacy,
including unreasonable search,
are not contingent on the government's justification for that violation
because one crime does not recommend another.
And even if you accept Flock's logic,
Flock's cameras are not being installed in response to a massive crime wave.
Crime is historically low, and Jeffrey Epstein is dead.
Not saying any crime is good, but that a new technology might allow additional crimes to be solved at the expense of individual rights is not balancing safety and privacy.
It's arguing that we collectively choose to give up our privacy on the promise of safety, and you don't have to take my word for it.
Flock's actual statement of its mission on its website reads, and I quote, our mission is to eliminate crime full stop.
It's like, did no one learn the lessons of Minority Report?
Even those freaky-diki tub people made mistakes.
And sure enough, Flock has led to a number of wrongful arrest and even jail time as a result of false identifications.
In Toledo, a man was held at gunpoint and attacked by police dogs after Flock confused the numbers two and seven.
That is so stupid.
Why would anyone's license plate be back seven to the future?
Fuck, I fucked it up.
Pretend you didn't hear it for it.
Fuck.
That is so stupid.
Why would anyone's license plate be back seven the future?
future.
Fuck.
Why would anyone's license plate
be back seven the future?
Why would anyone's license plate
be back seven the future?
Dozens of cities, including Los Angeles,
have ended contracts with flock. The most recent
was Tempe, Arizona, where the mayor said in a
statement Wednesday, we have to be able to provide
public safety in a way that maintains the trust of our
community for Tempe.
That means taking these cameras down.
Responded Flock's CEO,
that's disappointing from the mayor.
I expected more from someone with such a normal penis.
Can we show a picture of the mayor of Tempe, Arizona?
Personally, I wouldn't mess with a guy
that looks like he could make your head explode
by thinking about it real hard.
This guy's got a cool head.
Bernie Sanders posted,
going to the doctor, flock knows.
Dropping your kids off at school,
Flock is tracking you.
Added Bernie,
lied about going to the doctor
while actually meeting up with your ex and yes, having sex,
but even worse, exchanging the kind of warm, loving chit-chat
and inside jokes you never share with your wife anymore
who you haven't felt close to since before the kids were born?
Flock knows that too.
And on some level, so does your wife.
And libertarian Senator Rand Paul responded to Langley's suggestion of compromise
by tweeting, quote,
our founding fathers are rolling in their graves at this suggestion.
No, they're not, replied Flock's CEO, Garrett Langley,
as he watched a live feed of James Madison's corpse.
Of course, flock isn't the only surveillance technology that's part of this wonderful panopticon we're building.
Earlier this month, news leaked that Apple's next generation AirPods will be equipped with tiny cameras feeding data into Apple's AI.
Why am I pointed inside the ear?
And why did you program me to feel disgust, said Siri?
We can even see the cameras in action in a clip reportedly included by accident in a developer version of a Mac software update.
With visual intelligence, your world becomes savable.
See something you like?
Just ask me to save it for later.
Ah, yes, it's for taking pictures of books.
Big, beautiful, bouncing books on the subway.
I can't wait for the next Apple launch event where they're announcing these bad boys.
For years, we've heard one request again and again about the AirPods,
that if you drop your airports, they don't fire out of the case and across the room like tiny fucking RPGs.
Bad news.
We didn't deal with that at all.
If you forget your keys or what the inside of a public restroom look like,
Siri will be able to keep track of that for you.
These new AirPods follow Mehta's lead,
which despite privacy concerns,
claimed to have sold over 7 million pairs of smart glasses.
Well, now I know what I'm getting my co-worker for Christmas,
said a man who's been secretly recording his female co-worker since last Christmas.
As critics pointed out,
meta's new pervert glasses allow the wearer to film other people without their knowledge.
We often say that progress isn't linear,
but that's not true for perverts.
Perverts live in a world where things are constantly getting better.
The pervert looks toward the future with heart and fly open.
Earlier this year, an investigation by Swedish journalists found that contract workers for META
who were hired to help META's AI identify objects in videos,
complained about having to review footage taken with META's Rayband Smart Glasses
that included people having sex and using the bathroom,
said one weeping employee, and in some cases both at the same time.
Mehta responded, actually, by ending that contract.
Whether it's algorithmic feeds that lift up rage and paranoia,
or the destruction of the business model of journalism,
or a culture in which we are filming each other all the time,
the people who profit from the technology are the most insulated from its harms.
Meta denies wrongdoing in that big $17 billion settlement,
but no one on earth is more careful about keeping their kids away from social media
than the wealthiest parents in Silicon Valley.
Flock executives aren't worried about being tracked by border control or jealous exes
because they're American citizens and their relationships don't generate that level of passion.
And Mark Zuckerberg isn't afraid of a customer filming him
because he was having a bad day and was a little rude about remaking a latte.
Mark's on his private compound in Hawaii,
practicing a conversation he'll never have in the most expensive mirror you've ever seen.
And we should be furious and demanding laws that protect privacy
and allow us to control our data and its use.
But the problem is about more than what we've allowed,
these companies to do to us. But what we've used their products to do to each other. I saw a video
recently of a woman describing a bad experience she had at a restaurant in L.A. After a server chastised
her when her kids were making noise, the kind of post you see all the time. And of course, she named
and shamed the restaurant. And of course, in the comment, there was a lively debate. I'm so sorry
that happened to you. I'm sorry. You can't control your kids. And so maybe the server was rude,
or maybe that person is always rude. Or maybe just before her shift, her mother texted the family
group chat, a picture of her younger brother's new baby, and a passive-aggressive comment about how
happy he is that he moved back to their hometown, unlike our little dreamer in Los Angeles.
We are skeptical when a private company claims that cameras can eliminate all crime. We should be just
as skeptical of a culture in which we use our cameras to address the minor indignities and
frustrations that come with sharing a planet with other messy, self-involved, busy, emotional
human beings. Don't be the flock you don't want to see in the world. Just do what I do. Fan out
$10, $1 bills on the table and say to your waiter,
this is your tip.
I'll take away $1.
Every time I don't feel like I'm the center of your universe.
And finally, beloved actor Tim Curry,
star of Clue, Home Alone 2, and the Rocky Horror Picture Show
passed away at the age of 80.
Whoops, wrong 80-year-old from Home Alone 2, said God.
My bad.
According to his family, Tim Curry died peacefully
after Mrs. Peacock bludgeoned him with a lead pipe
in the billiard room.
We've got a great show for you tonight, and we'll be right back with Adam Mochler.
Hey, don't go anywhere.
There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up.
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All right.
Please welcome to the stage.
he's a Gen Z pundit ripping conservatives a new A
it's Adam McCler
Hey
How are you? Good to see you.
How are you doing? Thanks for having me on.
Yeah.
Are you not allowed to cuss?
What's ripping them a new A?
Oh, we can say all the words.
Okay.
And say it often do.
There's a couple we have said
and then have been told to stop saying.
Like what?
You know, there's a couple.
I can think of a few.
You can think of a few.
Think of a few and just know it's probably...
Oh, is it the word where it's like...
Yep.
Okay, yeah, I got it.
So Donald Trump declared mission accomplished in Iran this week with a beautiful post.
As you reflect on the ups and downs of the war, how proud are you of Trump for finally getting it done?
He's gotten it done like 30 times thus far.
We're day 180 days into this war that was supposed to be four to six weeks long, and we've gotten zero of our objectives achieved.
We were supposed to denuclearize them.
That didn't happen.
We were supposed to regime change them.
That didn't happen.
They said we were going to destroy their missiles.
That didn't happen.
and Trump is still hiding in carts in Turkey
because his life is in danger.
And then finally, they said we would stop
their ability to fund proxies in the region.
That didn't work either.
So the war is failing.
It's absolutely awful,
and it's costing us a lot of money.
Yeah, I don't care for the war either.
War is bad.
I think it was a huge mistake.
Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed
that called J.D. Vance,
the GOPs Obama.
It's obviously getting a,
Quite a response from the crowd.
I'm trying to think of all the ways in which that's true.
Are there any in particular that jump out to you
that make the comparison so apt?
It's hard to pick because it's so apt
in so many ways in which they are alike.
Well, Obama has charisma.
J.D. Vance has none.
He has none.
Zero Riz, as my generation says.
I think Obama is a liberal,
and he believes in liberal values.
J.D. Vance seems to be the antithesis of that.
Obama has nothing to do with Peter Thiel.
I don't know. I don't see it. What's the comparison?
Look, they both drew on their family background, which was, you know, they both experienced
sort of difficult parts of their childhood, and from that built an idea of what they believed
they should be doing in public life. Obama's was about knitting.
a nation together based on a shared set of values that recognize that people of different
faiths and politics can ultimately find common ground rooted in a shared set of ideas about
what America is and that to love America is to understand it is always changing and our job
is to figure out the best way to be part of that change. J.D. Vance, opposite. He experienced a lot
of hardship when he was a kid and then developed a theory of what caused
all of that, wrote it down, then said, actually, no, forget that. We're going to do the Trump
thing for a while and the tech thing. I mean, like, it's just, he just is a, I don't know, there's no
real way to tell a story. Like, J.D. Vance does not have a coherent story he tells from what led
from his youth to where he is now, in part because what he says now is completely different than what
he would have said seven or eight years ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that Obama doesn't have that
type of massive change in ideology over a small period of time. So I don't know. I don't get the
comparison. Yeah. It's interesting about charisma because it's a hard thing to define, but we know it
when we see it. I've always thought that there's a curve, which is basically there's a line, right?
People have a certain amount of personality, and they have a certain amount of charisma. And if you
have more personality than charisma, you're boorish and deeply annoying. That's fair. If you have kind of
less personality than charisma, you're cool and aloof and like kind of people want, it's like,
you have real charm and people kind of want to like kind of get to know you because you seem kind of
cool, right? And then, but I don't really know what happens when you go into negative charisma,
right? Like what I actually, it's like mathematically undefined. It's sort of like the Riemann
hypothesis. It's like we don't know what happened. Like it's like you have to like get to the
other side of the chart and it leads to a lot of strange implications, you know?
He's like a black hole of charisma. And you know what I like about it? To keep your science
analogies going. I like how hard
he tries when he's on stage.
He'll go to Ohio. He'll go to his own
home state and try to tell a joke
and the audience will just sit there and
not laugh. Kind of like the first joke that you tried at the
very beginning. And several
others throughout the fucking monologue.
But at least you picked it up. This guy
is consistently bombing
on stage with the same jokes over
and over.
So,
first of all, you
started a YouTube channel
when you were nine years old. Is that right?
Yeah. And it was devoted to Minecraft.
And Call of Duty, Minecraft, Call of Duty.
Was it a subtle, slow transition to politics where it slowly crept in?
Or was there one day where it was Minecraft and the next day it was politics?
You know, it was slow and subtle. It was over the course of a decade.
I used to get home from school and make these Minecraft videos.
And I got really solid at editing in the process.
I remember in high school, I privated all of those videos because I wanted to get girls.
I didn't want to be like the Minecraft guy.
This is the guy that's always playing Minecraft.
Oh, yeah.
And then I graduated.
and, you know, I realized there were Trump rallies happening one state over, two states over. I was in Indiana. There were caucuses happening in Iowa. So I started to travel to these Trump rallies and have respectful conversations with them, just talking to them about politics. And I realized there's a lot of mileage that can happen if you just have conversation with the other side and don't act overtly condescending. So that kind of built my style and built my flow to where I am. So to answer your question, gradual.
Well, it's sort of, we have two different, sort of yours is a kind of non-condescending disagreement.
I go for condescending agreement.
Okay.
That's sort of my approach generally to this show.
You also, though, are like, a lot of what people would see of you is not sort of whatever
conversations in which, you know, if you're on CNN, you're kind of in the rough and tumble.
It's not about hearing from the, it's a fight.
Like there was a famous moment where Scott Jennings got quite upset with you for, get your finger out of my, didn't he say, what do you say?
Get your finger out of my fucking face.
Get your finger out of my fucking face.
That's what he said.
Right.
And I watched the video.
Sorry, I had to get that out with my heart.
Your finger wasn't that close to his face, was it?
He was quite mad at you.
You want to know the real story?
Yeah.
It's that, you know what?
Be careful who you pretend to be.
Because he was pretending to be somebody who could keep up with this war, keep defending this war.
And it turned out he cracked under the pressure.
I was debating him week after week after week since the war began.
You know, he was defending it 10 days in, the Iran war.
He was defending at 30 days in.
He was defending at 40, 50 days in.
And, you know, Trump said there was going to be a four to six-week timeline.
So about 90 days in, we've been on a bunch of panels,
and he just can't answer any questions about the war anymore.
What concessions have we gotten?
He doesn't know.
Are we any closer to the nuclear material being removed?
He doesn't know.
So there's this dynamic on some of these panels where he kind of plays the rule.
He plays the time of the segments.
He'll sit there condescendingly.
He'll smirk.
He'll cut other people off.
And then he'll lie and just hope that everyone moves on, do the time limitations of the segment.
And I said, fuck that.
If you're not going to play by the rules, I'm not either.
I'm going to sit there and try to get a direct answer from you.
So I asked him multiple times, name one concession we've gotten from this war.
Like, maybe I was gesticulating a bit much, but he absolutely felt cornered.
And he said, get your fucking hand out of my face.
I thought he was going to strike me.
I thought he was going to cry in that moment.
And, you know, in the commercial break right there, I tweeted out like, what did I say?
I was like, I literally think he's about a cry sitting next to me.
and it got like 2 million views.
So maybe there's a little condescension right there.
I don't know if that's sort of just sort of bitchy.
A little bitchy.
Well, okay, there's another one.
Brendan Carr responded to the clip
as it was going viral and said,
actually, you can say fuck on TV,
so I don't care about this.
The FCC chair.
And I was like, well, can you show a pussy on TV?
Because I think CNN just did that.
That's good.
Got them.
Got them.
They still invited me back on.
Yeah, that's great.
We have, of course they invite you back on.
Hey, hey, should we have the guy from that viral altercation that everyone's talking about?
No, no, no, we don't want that.
No more viewers here at CNN.
We're all set on viewers.
Too many viewers this week, we said.
Let's not gildolilly.
So, I want to talk about, like, sort of what it meant to be part of, you know,
Genzi growing up on YouTube, and now, and that is sort of the water you swim in.
There's a lot of talk about the ways in which this generation is in some cases,
you know, some parts of it are, you know, further to the left.
There's also a lot of disaffected people that have gone in the direction of sort of the Andrew Tates.
First of all, does the fact that some of these manosphere figures are, like, kind of being exposed,
does that do anything to kind of change kind of the role, these sort of, I don't know what you'd call them,
like these influencers who act like kind of gurus, the place they have,
are people shaken loose from this?
I think they are, but due to a lot of factors beyond the fact that the Tate brothers have been arrested.
If people don't know, the Tate brothers are sitting in a Florida prison right now about to be extradited to the United Kingdom.
Yeah, clap, thankfully.
For human trafficking, sex trafficking, rape charges, child sexual abuse material charges, like disgusting stuff.
In the court filings, their lawyer is now exposing them and saying that they were renting a lot of their vehicles, their Bougatis, their Aston Martins.
I made a video about this and I confused Bugatti with Aston Martin.
emails for days. Don't do that.
It's funny. It's sort of like if you're saying that you want gun control, but you accidentally
mischaracterize a certain kind of weapon, and then you'll be kind of vilified by gun people,
but it's that for the people that care about the difference between a Bugatti and an Aston Martin.
I was like, I've never ridden it either. I don't know. But the point is, Andrew Tate is being
exposed brutally by his own team because they're desperately trying to prevent extradition.
Trump actually helped him get out of Romania, out of the investigation, and come back
the United States in February of 2025 because Paul and Grascia, Baron Trump, and a lot of people
around him were lobbying for this. There are many reports about this in New York Times. So I do think
a lot of the Tate's loyal fan base is beginning to shake. But when it comes to young men in anti-socialization,
do you want me to jump in? Yeah, no, do it. I just, I think it speaks to a broader problem of a few
things combining. Right now, algorithms are uniquely radicalizing young people. You have Elon Musk who
owns X. And X is like Nazi
Germany right now. Like Elon Musk himself
will be tweeting fake crime statistics
about black Americans, about trans Americans,
about immigrants. So he's radicalizing
people en masse. We have foreign
actors. Think like Russia, Iran,
China. They want to weaken social cohesion
by radicalizing young people.
You combine that with the anti-socialization
of many young people. Like they're not
smoking, drinking, having sex as much. I am. I'm doing all this.
Yeah, no. You're cool. You're cool. You're cool. Everyone knows
you're cool. Everyone knows you're cool. It's comedy. And I get
I see it, I feel it, I know it.
Okay, thanks, thanks.
I'm pretending to be.
Be careful to be something you're not.
Okay, so, I mean, the reality is,
COVID fucked with a lot of young people's brains.
I was rather antisocial during COVID.
I put a bubble up around myself
and wasn't speaking to many people,
and I had to intentionally tear that bubble down after
and start dating again,
start hanging out with friends.
Many young people didn't do that.
They got deeper into their bubble,
they got deeper into these algorithms.
They're online all of the time
with a lack of socialization,
and you could even point to Tyler Robinson,
someone like that, the guy who killed Charlie Kirk,
he was deep in these algorithms,
he was deeply radicalized and antisocial,
and it kind of is a bad combination.
So I think there's this reductive analysis by Republicans
where they're like all young people are studying Karl Marx Now.
No, no, it's not really that.
People just want change.
People feel disillusion with the current systems,
and they're looking for something different.
And it shouldn't be Andrew Tate.
Yeah, no, and I do think, too,
like there is this effort in the wake of some kind of,
of mass violence or acts of,
of sort of directed violence,
whether it's a mass shooting or an assassination
or assassination attempt to,
there's this immediate effort to go comb through the record
to figure out, well, what was their claim to the justification?
Why did they do this?
Why are they saying they did this?
And everyone is looking and hoping
that it doesn't kind of redone to a criticism of their side,
that they're not on their team, right?
But then, like, that is such, and I get the impulse, right?
But really, like, people I think would be uncomfortable to link Tyler Robinson with Luigi Mangione.
They would.
There's a lot of people that would hear this and people that I think would be view that as some like whatever, like sort of unfair.
But what links people that do mass shootings or targeted assassinations is a desire, is first of all being radicalized online most of the time now and desiring to go out in some kind of.
blaze of glory, right? And that, and if you see it as that pathway, in the end, like, yes, of course it
matters if the president is stoking violence. Of course it matters if as a society we're not
rejecting a politics in which we can justify or defend cruel, violent behavior. But what, and it
matters who's doing it. But if you look beneath that, right, like that pathway is the danger, right?
It's what it's what the tech and the, the platforms allow people to become. And you even see it in
less radical ways.
It's not always just murder.
Mike Collins has a staffer in Georgia
who literally posted a swastika
made out of the word twink, right?
You guys were talking about that.
And I mean, that is a very, very good example
of a young dude, a young staffer who's radicalized.
Paul Ingrossia, who works for the Trump administration,
has leaked text where he says he has a Nazi streak in him.
So there's all these examples.
Beyond just Tyler Robinson and Luigi Mangione,
there was somebody who shot up a Colorado
school the same day Charlie Kirk was murdered. He killed multiple people. He was a young dude who was
radicalized on forums, on 4chan, and it's a very real problem. And we have insidious actors in power
right now, people like Elon Musk, who worse than this. I do think Trump in a top-down way
just makes everything more volatile. But there is something to be said about young people just
feeling broadly disillusioned. And you know what? You know what the worst part is? Some of the bad faith
actors who take advantage of that are like Andrew Interest and Tate. They're like, you know what we can do?
we can act like we have Bugatti's.
That's how they say it, Bugatti's.
We can act like we have those,
and then we can trick young men into buying our course
and then to sell hatred for women.
So it's pretty insidious, right?
Yeah, it's not good.
And look, I just want to say,
as someone who has a Bugatti,
it makes you happy.
It's so fun.
I love my Bugatti.
I'm going to put a flock camera
right outside it and just watch your bra.
That's fine.
I'm not doing anything wrong.
I'm not doing anything wrong.
Flok and God can watch everything I do
in my Bugatti.
which I have.
Inspired by your thoughtful consideration
of the male loneliness epidemic.
We want to close out our combo
in a completely thoughtless lightning round.
We're calling,
Is this man lonely?
I will name a man.
You tell me, gut reaction.
Lonely?
Here we go.
First up, Pete Heggseth.
No, no, he's got a bottle of whiskey with him all the time.
I feel like you can never be lonely
with a bottle of whiskey.
He's got the captain.
He's got Jack, you know, he's got Jack Day.
Are you just going to put a photo of me on screen?
One of these?
Oh, yeah.
Adam Ackler, Lonely?
No, no, no, no.
My girlfriend's back there.
She's something similar back there.
Yeah, yeah, no, you're definitely pointing at a person for sure.
Yeah.
She goes through.
You're not just pointing at a sort of a diffuse area of the studio.
No, no, there's a real woman back there who is your girlfriend.
I believe you.
You're good.
She goes to a different school.
Yeah, she goes to not lonely.
Jady Vance.
You know, despite being surrounded by staffers and like-minded people all the time,
there's got to be something pretty isolating to selling out your soul and becoming a skin suit for MAGA.
Yeah, I think so, too. You know that thing if you're like at a loud restaurant or party or bar and you go into the bathroom and there's a buzzing quiet? I imagine that's around JD Vance a lot of the time. Yeah, yeah. You know that buzzing super quiet? Yeah, lonely.
There's this Mac Miller quote.
He's like, I've got problems as big as my house.
And it's basically talking about the more successful he got, the more lonely he got.
That's a lot of these people right there.
God, I don't want to...
I was feeling that in my Bugatti the other day.
I was like, is this what it's all for?
Yeah, it's awesome.
I love this Bugatti.
And how fast it goes and how low to the ground I am?
I don't know.
You definitely know Bugatti's.
Chuck Schumer.
Oh, man.
I think he's more lonely in politics than in life.
Yeah, that's actually where I was going with it.
Yeah, he's kind of on an island right now.
Him and Jeffries are kind of just going through it.
I think Jeffries has a self-inflicted sort of wound right now
in the form of the Kushner meeting.
Schumer, I think he would have been a great operator in like 2010
or maybe like 1810 or something like that.
Yeah, somewhere, yeah.
I think right now in 2026 he's not meeting the moment.
Yeah.
So you sort of agree with the kind of, I don't know, online left.
broad left view that it was wrong for Hakeem Jeffries to meet with Jarekishner.
Listen, it's nuanced. I can understand meeting with the other side about affordability issues
and trying to talk to the other side and sit down. Like, I can understand how this is something
that happens in politics. However, Jeffries has already pissed off a lot of Democratic voters.
He's already seen as weak by the base. Like time and time again, he has been seen as too soft
on this type of stuff. So while I do understand that meetings can't happen with the other side,
you can't just recklessly go out there and be like, yep, I met with Kushner.
Is Kushner even a part of the, it's even like an official part of the administration?
He is not an official part of the administration.
It feels a little bit odd.
So I understand why someone could meet, but this just isn't no.
Yeah, I think the problem is not that he met with Jared Kushner.
It's that he is not the politician that has done the, that has become for people
that are meant to be a supporters, someone who could meet with Kushner.
And they'd be like, cool, you give him a what for.
You know, he hasn't done that part of it.
That's the problem.
Mom Donnie met with Trump in the Oval Office,
even off the record for a bit,
and nobody really had a problem
because we knew that Mom Donny was assertive.
He was likely on message.
With Jeffreys, he hasn't proven
that we should be confident
in his ability to do that.
Let's see.
Let's do RFK Jr.
No, no, he's not lonely.
He's surrounded by an array of animals
at any moment that he's going to slice open
or put in the trunk of his car.
Absolutely.
Next up, Brian Johnson, the longevity guy.
Oh, you know what?
no i hope this guy's not lonely something about his relationship with his girlfriend is really funny his
wife he's always tweeting about her my girlfriend and i always quote this because there's this one tweet he's
like it's been five days without her she needs a shower to wash off the dirtied world around her i miss her so
much and uh i swear i'm not making this up he also is always talking about the um the vaginal microbiome
yeah that's the guy right yeah we're saying not lonely he's got all the bacteria out of hang out with
Yeah, he's got the right floor, the right fauna, all of it.
Well, RFK Jr. has the right fauna, and this guy's got the right floor.
All right.
And finally, Ray from Girls.
Bro, who slipped this guy in here?
I don't know.
Hallie really wanted us to talk about whether or not Ray from Girls is lonely.
No, he reminds me a little bit of myself.
So I'd like to think no.
Okay, we're going to say no.
We're going to say not lonely, good for Ray.
What's his character type?
I would say that he was, he's definitely ornery.
I would say needy, kind of obstinate.
I think at times lonely, it sort of depends on the season.
Depends on the season of HBO's Girls.
Thank you, Adam Magler.
Check out the Adam Magler debate show.
I didn't even talk about all your debates on YouTube
and at Adam Mochler on socials.
And we'll be right back with Sonom Obsessian.
Obsessian, Mozes, I'm obsessed.
Hey, don't go anywhere.
There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up.
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And we're back.
My next guest was Conan O'Brien's assistant.
Now she is his podcast co-host and his greatest nemesis.
Please welcome to the stage, Sonam Obsessian.
Hi, welcome.
Thanks for being here.
Thank you for having me.
This is fun.
It's so fun.
First, can I tell you that I had to learn a little trick to make sure that I struggle
with name pronunciations just because I do it phonetically.
And does it work to say like,
Oh, yeah.
Has anyone given that to you before?
I actually think that when you do the subtitles, it says obsession.
Yeah.
So an obsession.
That's cool.
So it's a good way to remember it.
But I was actually saying back there when I heard you pronounce it, you did a really good job pronouncing the name.
Hell yeah.
Well done.
Nice.
I could tell you live in L.A. now because it's an Armenian name.
Yeah.
And you have to learn how to pronounce those.
Yeah.
There's a lot of us.
There's a lot of Armenians here in Los Angeles.
Mm-hmm.
And that's good.
You know what?
Some people say it's bad. I think it's good.
Oh, who says it's bad?
I don't know. You know people.
Oh, I know. You know what?
Glendale has the highest insurance out of the entire country. Did you know that?
No. Yeah. Yeah.
Your first book, The World's Worst Assistant, came out in 2022. Your follow-up,
The World's Worst Mom hits bookstores on September 1st. It seems like you're not good at things you're doing.
Would you say your strengths or vibes-based?
I'm a big vibes person. I know my weaknesses and I know my strengths. And being an assistant, I'm not
that good at, even though I did it for 12 years. And then being a mom, I feel like I'm failing
every day, and I've done that for five years. So I like to stick to it, at least. I feel like what
we should think about is who would be beside you on the Mount Rushmore of personality hires.
Personality hires? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I think a lot. If you were a bad assistant for 12 years,
but you've sort of stuck it out, that's like a, that's impressive.
I mean, it's certainly more impressive than being a good assistant because I'm sure a good assistant's going to last, but a bad assistant, that's amazing.
Yeah, well, I think that what I'm good at is I'm definitely a ride or die.
You know, like, I'm not like, I mean, I'm glad this is a political podcast.
I'm not like a Natalie harp.
Like, I'm not about to write love notes to Conan.
Yeah.
But I think that I, I'm loyal.
Like, I, you know, I feel like I will defend him.
I yell at a lot of people.
you know, like on the phone if someone messes something up, I do that. I do that really well. And sometimes
you have to do that a lot. And so that, I have strengths. I do. What's your style as a, as a, as a, as, when
someone's fucking up or you need to yell on behalf of, of the boss? Like, what is your style for doing that?
Well, I start off really sweet. And if they can't help me, then I keep talking. And then it gets to a point
where I'm not like yelling, but I'm assertive. And I think it makes a huge difference to be
assertive as opposed to just screaming at people. So when I said yelling, I meant I'm just assertive.
And I think I can tend to like, I can scare people if I need to. Like I have a mission and I just like
go for it. That's cool. Is it? Yeah. Okay. Because I can feel there's an intensity and kind of a way
in which you're not breaking eye contact. Yeah. Is that weird? No, it's powerful. You know,
because you know what else was like that? Like last week was Jimmy Simpson. Remember Jimmy Simpson?
and he wouldn't break eye contact with me, and it was cool.
One of the oboils from...
Yeah, one of the oboils.
From It's Always Sunny?
Yeah, he locks in.
Oh, he locks in.
Yeah.
It's very aboyal-esque.
Yeah.
Well, it's sort of you see why he sort of gets to play these sort of intense and kind of
sometimes freaky dudes.
You saying I'm intense?
I think you're intense.
Yeah, I think you're intense.
You do?
I think there's an intensity.
Okay.
I'm getting it.
You are?
Yeah.
I didn't know that about myself, but I, I like that I'm intense.
I think it's cool.
I think it makes sense because.
because I think you, to be able to hold your own with Conan requires being very intense because
he, right?
I mean, that must be part of it.
I don't think, well, holding my own with Conan is more, am I laughing at the things he's
saying?
I feel like that's been my job security for 17 years.
But see, in the same way, in the same way that, in the same way that Conan plays down aspects of the way he's
hyper intense smart and focus while being goofy.
Right.
You're laughing at a lot of jokes, but you're holding your own and like not, he's not,
you're still, he's not in charge in the conversation.
You're both in charge of those interactions.
I mean, I guess so.
I think so.
You're right.
First of all, I came into the game 16 years in for him.
So he had this massive following.
And it's really, I do think that there's a lot of things that play against me sometimes.
I'm not a comedian. I don't do improv. So I'm just this person who worked for him that he puts in front of the camera sometimes and now puts me on a podcast. And that's, I think that that could sometimes be weird for some people, but I think that also takes the pressure off of me in a way. Does that make sense? Yeah. Because I don't have to try to be funny or interesting.
Well, but right. But so, yeah, but I think like what I'm just thinking, it's like, sure, but, but that's, sure, but, but that's, but I'm just thinking, it's like, sure, but
There's a lot of people who are, don't have to be funny or interesting, but who would be terrible.
But I'm saying, but there's clearly, like, you're coming into us, even when you start, even what you just described, like, there are many people who might have a great laugh, right, who would absolutely wilt and panic being, just having that role with Conan, but you didn't.
There's some kind of assuredness that you brought to it that made it feel special.
And that has to do, that is not just, that's not you as passive.
that's like you doing something.
I think that not having anything to lose in a way is actually really liberating.
Because if I don't, let's say he, so this podcast that we're on that, you know,
it's Conan O'Brien needs a friend, it's a big podcast.
If all of a sudden everyone's like, we don't like Sona anymore, you should take her off,
I'll just be like, okay, cool, I'm just going to hang out here then.
You know, I'll watch in the green room from now on.
Like I think that if it's very liberating when you get to a point where you're like very fine with whatever
happens. And I think
that that's probably what I give off.
Wait, so your husband, Tack, grew up in
Soviet Armenia. Well, you grew up in
Greater Los Angeles. I did.
I actually grew up at Montaello. I'm sorry.
I know you said that it was, are you from East L.A.?
Yes, like, I went to Garfield.
Oh, you did? My dad graduated from
Monabello High School.
East L.A. where they caught the Night Stalker.
Right. Yeah, they beat the shit
out of him. They got him. Yeah, they
did. They saw him and they're like,
that's the guy. And they beat the shit out of
him. That's the, that's a very L.A. thing to do.
Hell yeah. Yeah, but yeah. No, we, so we're different. We're very different. Well, the other thing that's
very L.A. is to get killed by the Nightsucker. Yeah, yeah, or just a serial killer. Yeah, generally.
It's like, what are we doing L.A.? Well, we get killed by the Nightsucker. We beat up the
night stalker. I did not. You know. This is going to be so dark. Yeah. I brought a weird
energy today. I know. And you're sitting like that and I sat like this because this is how I like to sit.
Well, because you're, like, folded. Okay. Me too. Yeah. Wow. We have so much.
comment. We do. I like it. Oh, but yeah, he grew up in Soviet Armenia. Wow. Yeah. I know. It's very different.
Does it affect your parenting styles? So a little bit, you know, he's, so my, my husband doesn't like
staying in line for stuff, like food. And I think it's because he grew up in the Soviet Union. He says
it's not. So I used to go to trendy restaurants before, and now, like, we'll go to Panera bread.
And he'll think that that's like, oh, we're having a nice, we're going to a nice bakery. I'm like,
all the nice bakeries have lines in front of them, but you won't let us go there.
So we go to places like Panero bread.
And then, you know, he'll show the kids some, like, Soviet cartoons sometimes,
and they're just, like, weird versions of what we grew up with.
So there's Vinnie Pooch, which is the Soviet Winnie the Pooh.
And, you know, the one here is, like, a really, like, affable little bear.
And the one there is, like, he's voiced by a guy who just smoked a lot of cigarettes,
and he's just like, like, he's speaking this.
like he's speaking in this weird Russian.
And I'm like, we can't show this to our kids.
Everything in the Soviet style is just slightly off.
Like the Tom and Jerry is isn't a cat and a mouse.
It's a wolf and a bunny.
And I'm like, this is weird.
The Soviet version of all this stuff is just weird.
And I think that's why Soviet people in general are just off a little.
Yeah, no, I think it's the combination of the weird cartoons
and the sort of shadow of communism.
Oh, that could be it too.
No, no, that's a good point.
That could be it too.
That's a good point.
That's a good point.
Deprivation.
That's a good point.
Yeah, he wasn't allowed to have a VCR.
I'm sorry, I don't know why I'm laughing.
It's awful.
Like people had it.
People had to like sneak in a VCR to people's houses because they weren't allowed to have them.
And I was like, you can't even have a VCR?
We had a VCR, but all the movies were just taped from television,
which means we never had the first 30 seconds of any movie.
Oh, no.
What did you learn from your years as Conan's assistant?
I learned in TV, you know, when you're talking about a personality hire, it does go a long way.
When you're able to, like, be a good people person, it does go a long way.
So there's a lot of things, you know, I got done just because people liked working with me.
And then with Conan, Conan has this very intense work ethic.
He's very, you know, like, for him, he's, you know, he's, you know, he's.
He doesn't want to put anything out there until it's exactly the way he wants it to be.
And I am the absolute opposite in a way.
I'm a very like, this is good enough.
This will be fine.
And then we'll like fix it, maybe tinker it, but this is good enough.
I didn't learn any of his work ethic.
I don't even know why I brought that up.
Like I didn't, I got none of that rubbed off on me.
But I just, I think that I really learned, here's what I learned.
And this is actually serious.
You can be in a position where people,
respect you in your field and love you and you're a beloved figure and you could still be a very
decent person and that's what Conan's showed me is that you know anytime i hear someone mistreat
their staff or as an awful person i i look at Conan i'm very lucky and i you know i always
joke that i'm going to be working for him until he dies um and you know which could be any minute
because he's like you know he's kind of fragile um and he's tall and like big dog
You know, they don't last as long.
He can just tip over and he's done.
And he's Irish.
And he's Irish.
I mean, he lives in LA.
I mean, yeah, yeah.
That's a really rough combination.
So I do think that it does have a lot to do with just being a decent person and treating your staff very, very nicely.
And what if you don't do that?
What if you don't do that?
Like, what if there are there other ways you're like, what if it's like you lead with fear, you know, and setting people against each other?
Oh, I don't know.
No, I mean like a Bill O'Reilly, like, oh, fuck it, we'll do it live.
Like that kind of thing.
That's sort of my model.
I don't know.
I don't know if that works.
That's your model?
Well, let's talk about it.
You've committed to a life sentence of having Conan O'Brien for a boss.
Yeah.
Which makes you the perfect judge for our next segment.
Welcome to Boss court.
Boss court.
Boss court.
Here's how works.
The producers of this show have assembled evidence against me, but also evidence for my defense
because they're sick like that.
I will read each example.
Zona, you're going to tell us, based on the evidence, if I'm a good or a bad boss.
Ooh, I like this.
And this is like my dream of being a judge on one of those judge shows without having to do all the work to get there.
I kindly invited us to take nice, unused furniture from his basement, but never confirmed an actual time and date for pickup.
And by the time we cycled back to claim the furniture, it had been eaten by rats.
Is that true?
So I'll tell you something, what happened, which is...
Oh, my God.
So what happened was, I'll tell you what happened.
I live in a home that used to belong to an actor, and she gets these PR boxes, okay?
PR boxes were just thrown over the door into the yard, and I would just collect these PR boxes.
And when I first moved to the house, I would text, it's Vanessa Hudgens, I would text, I'd talk about it, I would text Vanessa Hudgens, assistant, and be like, can you please come pick up there's another round of boxes?
I mean endless, at leisure and books and new kinds of sunscreens,
all these PR companies are just sending big famous people, all the stuff.
Yeah.
It's a window you would, I never knew.
Yeah.
The more free stuff.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But eventually it's like it's been over a year.
And like we just at some point, like the assistant stops coming.
The stuff piles up.
When my sister and mom would come to town, they would call it going to the mall.
And then go look at some of this free shit.
to be like, oh, look, there's like a cool bathing suit, whatever.
But unbeknownst to me, one of the boxes was a company,
there was just a box in the basement,
and it had protein powder for some upstart protein company.
And a couple of rats got in the basement,
ate the protein powder, became super strong rats.
And it was a concentrated box with so many calories that they, like,
within a few weeks, like unbeknownst, you just, just rats.
And they just ate the chairs.
Oh, my God.
And then, you know what we did?
We killed all those fucking brats.
So at that point, you were like, hey, staffers, come get through the...
No, no, no, no, no.
Long before.
Long before.
Long before.
It was like, oh, we got to find a time.
You got to come grab it.
Because my partner moved in and there was a bunch of over there.
So I just had extra stuff.
Yeah.
And so they were going to come by and check out the furniture, but we never really set a time mostly on me, but partially on them.
And then the rats got it.
But how long between you...
sending that like, hey, come pick up the furniture.
Months? Months.
You're a shitty boss.
Yep.
Yeah, no, that's on you.
Bad boss.
Yeah.
Oh, your whole staff is clapping.
That says a lot about you, Ellen.
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
Oh, shit.
She's never coming back on her podcast.
She never was anyway.
Isn't she in the Cotswolds?
No.
Yeah, I think the Cotswolds.
I think the Cotswolds, for sure.
Yeah.
I got five 32-ounce Diet Coke's from McDonald's,
but it was just because they were having a deal,
and by the time we got them, they were mostly flat.
According to Producer Bill, this is what producer Bill said.
He made me join him on an elevator ride
to achieve a large delivery order with like five sodas,
and then for the entire ride explained his complex scheme.
For it's more advantageous to order the five large sodas
because it's a better deal.
Also, the number of people in the room
just outnumbered the Diet Coke's,
which was like a sick mind game.
Why did you get it from McDonald's?
Because of the best Diet Coke's.
No, the fountain ones are the better.
That's what it was.
It was fountain dikechoke from McDonald.
You had pictures of the bottles on here.
Well, that was just an image.
That's, yeah.
No, it was Fountain Diet Coke's.
Okay.
And because there was a discount once you got past four, so I got five.
You are such a magnet for those kinds of scams, it sounds like.
Oh, yeah.
People are like, oh, you get two for the price of one.
They're each $64.
Well, no, that's not what I'm trying to say.
Hold on. No, one is $64. If you pay $5 more, you get the second one that's like a little bigger. And you're like, yeah, I'll do that. And you end up buying things you don't really need. Yeah.
That took so long for me to say. No, but I do. But I do get the things you don't need. Yeah. But so you got you just went to, so you went to McDonald's to get four. You got five. And you were like, I'm going to be nice and give this out to people. You had Bill come and take it from you. Well, because I couldn't hold five.
Okay. Because it's hard. Once you get to five, you know what, I'm just going to say.
you're a bad boss.
Fair enough.
You're just awful.
Nothing's worse than flat Diet Coke from McDonald's.
Because you're right, the McDonald's Diet Coke's are the best.
It was flat by the time we got it.
So did you call that McDonald's?
Can you call McDonald's?
Yeah, you can't.
Or I would have driven back and I would have been like...
See, that's cool.
That's cool.
That's cool.
Yeah.
I would have gotten a refund for what is that like...
It was like, well,
I can't remember it was like $17
once I got to the fifth.
Yeah, it would have gotten a refund for $17.
It's not even about the money.
It's the principle of the thing.
Let's do one more.
Pulled us aside one day to explain that he was dating one of our colleagues.
No!
While defensively explaining how they went to HR
and signed some sort of document about it,
but did invite us to roast him at their eventual wedding
and we really went for the comedic jugular.
Oh, wow.
You dated someone who worked here?
Uh-huh.
a subordinate?
Well, everyone's a
support net.
Oh, that's true.
That's true.
Yeah, it was, but I was,
but I was, but you signed this document.
I was so worried about the, the,
the ethics of it.
Yeah.
That I was like, I, like, I was so careful about making sure that the person who I love
and is now married to me.
Oh, I felt comfortable.
Yeah, we're married.
Okay, that's good.
Yeah, they're a love my life.
Oh, that's sweet.
I realized at some point that they were the love of my life and we're going to have to figure out
how to, we would have to figure out how to, we would have to figure out to do this.
Oh, that's sweet.
And so it was a little bit complicated, but we did sign the paperwork.
It was called a love contract.
Did invite us to roast him at their, is what?
It's called a love contract.
It is.
It actually exists.
Yes, because you have to say you won't keep dating if you don't love each other
because you have to prove, you have to say to the company,
hey, if you're not interested in each other, you can't stay together just because you happen to work together.
So you have to agree that if you're not in love, you're undid.
Oh.
Isn't that an interesting document?
That's very weird, though.
Yeah.
Like what if you're not there yet?
Yeah.
I don't know.
Okay.
And you guys were there.
We were there.
Oh, that's really sweet.
No, I like, you know what?
I like love.
I'm like a 14-year-old girl when I get to like rom-com stuff.
And this feels very rom-com.
So I think you're a great boss here.
Yeah.
I know.
I knew I said I was going to be bad boss the whole time, but you got me.
Thank you, Sona.
Pre-order the world's mom.
Now or check it out.
out in scores on September 1st. We'll be right back with the rant wheel.
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Let's welcome Adam back to the stage. Adam Mockla returns. Sit here with us. Welcome back.
There's nothing like a short spin after a long week because it's.
It's time for the rant wheel.
Oh, no.
Here's it works.
We spin the wheel.
Wherever it lands, that person rants.
Why do we have a wheel to land on the three people on stage when all three of us are going to get to rant?
We don't know.
We all get to rant.
Yeah.
It's just, it's, we've never cracked it.
Let's spin the wheel.
It has landed on, Adam.
What would you like to rant about for 60 seconds?
Oh, now?
Okay.
I'm really, really sick of men who refuse to change and then complain.
that women don't actually like them.
Women have been forced to change
for men for all of human history,
and now young men are confused and mad
that they have to go outside,
put an effort, take a shower,
put down the controller,
stop watching Andrew Tate,
and actually put in some effort
to go get a girl.
I mean, my girlfriend has changed me for the better.
I now have more than three shirts to choose from.
I was like a cartoon character,
the same few shirts.
These pants, he chose.
I have ambient lighting in my place.
I used to just have hospital lights.
Like, everything was incredibly bright.
I'm on my phone less.
It's overall a net positive.
And I think that a lot of men can change themselves for the better,
can be changed and helped in a relationship.
And I think that, yeah, put down the Andrew Tate,
go put on deodorant, go outside, go better yourself,
and go try to find someone you love.
That's nice.
Thanks, guys.
Yeah.
Wait, four seconds, three seconds.
And also, yeah, grow up.
Grow up.
Yeah, no, for sure.
I like that.
Yeah, I think it's funny, the effort thing.
because it's like, I feel like there's a way in which, especially when you're young, you're like,
ugh, I don't want to pretend to be someone I'm not, because then they'll eventually see who the real me is.
So I'm not going to put on a big effort to try to make myself look or act or like kind of put on a show and that's not who I am.
And it's like, no, no, no, you misunderstand.
The effort you put in going into a date is not about the person you're pretending to be at the end of that effort.
The effort itself is proving you're the kind of person who makes an effort.
and people should want to be with someone who makes an effort.
And if you're not willing to make an effort, that is revealing.
That is the person that people don't want to date.
Not the person that you're showing up as the real you.
It's the person that didn't make the effort.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah, that was another good rant.
That was perfect.
You know, like, I think there's a self-fulfilling prophecy
where people think that I'm not even going to try.
I'm not worth it.
I think that women won't like me.
And then because of that, it weakens their confidence interval
and stops them from actually trying.
So try.
Yeah.
And it's okay to get rejected.
I think that people,
Did you say yeah?
Did you say, who said yeah?
Oh, okay.
Somebody really agreed with me on that who clearly gets rejected.
I've been rejected a lot.
No, I'm kidding.
I'm totally kidding.
He's like, I'm never speaking again.
I know, poor guy.
I think that there's a very risk-averse kind of quality that's coming out for a lot of people,
and they're very terrified of rejection.
And I, you know, before I met my husband, I got to a point where I just started hitting
on anything and everything that I wanted to hit on.
and I got rejected and sometimes I didn't.
And I would leave my number for waiters sometimes if I thought they were cute.
So I, uh, it's, you'll be fine.
You'll survive rejection.
I do think that that's something that is important for young men especially to know.
I just want to finish this off by saying rejection is like removed from our society with young men because
if I want to go apply for a job, I do it online via LinkedIn.
If I want to find a date, I would like go on hinge before.
If I want to get food, I don't even have to go out in public.
I can just door dash it.
we've removed a lot of that social friction and that rejection.
Yeah, that's true.
Let's spin it again.
Oh, my God.
Sonna, what would you like to rant about?
I'm going to be honest.
I didn't fully know what I was going to rant about.
And then when Adam started talking, I was like, yeah, you know what?
Men don't go out and like get to know women a lot.
And so on that point, I would like to talk about perimenopause.
And here's why.
We learn about when it starts, when our whole female puberty starts.
nobody tells us what happens to us when it's ending. And I wish someone had told me what happens when
it's ending. And as a woman in her 40s, I'm deep in it. I'm angry that no one talked about it before.
I feel like you two can just chime in at any minute if you want to, you know, roll with me on this.
But it is definitely something that really lacks from female education. It's just shows how little
people talk about what's actually happening with women's bodies in general, which is really
frustrating and I think that
I would really love
if older generations had
warned me about it and nobody ever did
and now I'm deep in it and I'm
a little resentful towards my mom
especially.
What would you like to?
Rise up. Paramenopause, let's do it.
What do you wish you were warned about?
What happens? You learn about menopause
right? You learn about what happens when it ends
but no one tells you about this period of time which is the buildup to it
which is when your body is like
going fucking crazy.
Like things are happening.
You know, everything's changing.
You're itching a lot.
Like your body is just weird.
Things are happening.
And you don't know why it's happening.
And then you talk to your friends
and someone did the research
and then you start really going down
the deep dive of this hole
that is paramedopause.
And it's, I really wish,
I think it's endemic
of a lot of other things
about how there's very
little research when it comes to what happens to women's bodies in general, how the information
is not there for a lot of people and things happen to us. We have no idea why it's happening to
us. It takes forever for us to get diagnosed with certain things sometimes. So yeah, I'm, I'm pissed.
I'm ranting. It's really weird. I have a family member who a month ago was talking about the same
thing. She's in her 40s going to the same exact thing and said there's not enough research.
She has to reserve to like Reddit threads and personal experiences because a lot of stuff
surrounding pregnancy, and like you said, changes in women's bodies, is very, very under-researched,
and it's a big, big problem right now.
Yep. Yep.
Dishore.
Dissue.
I think we've looked at it enough.
We got a lot of good information, and we've got to focus on more important things affecting
men.
There's a lot of things going on in male bodies that we don't fully understand.
Oh, yeah?
Yeah.
Like what?
Oh, tons of stuff.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
Let's spin it again.
It has landed on me.
So Aeroon, this very fancy grocery store in Los Angeles, just opened up another location.
They're getting closer and closer to the magic number, which is 20.
Because at 20, I think they're at 17 or maybe 18, depending how you count.
At 20, Arawon will have to start posting calories.
And I think that is going to be awesome.
Because that is going to be, when people find out what is going on inside of these fucking smoothies,
these $16
healthy smoothies
and they discover
that they've been basically
having a fucking
dairy queen blizzard
for years.
It is going to be
so thrilling.
The streets will run
fucking red.
Yeah.
But like my God,
you think some of the shit
that was,
I mean,
the shit that's going to go down
in this city
at that,
at that fucking
valley aerouan.
It is going to look like,
it's going to look like,
like, it's going to look like a rack.
It's going to be crazy.
The battles that are
fought on the street. Yeah. You know what that reminds me of is that scene in mean girls when
Regina George finds out that she's been eating protein bars that are just designed to make her fat.
And she loses her mind and then just releases the burn book. That's like on a citywide scale.
And you know what? They're never going to get there. Or if they do, they're going to change the name.
Yes. So this is the thing. So like the reason that there's Hillstone and Hirstone.
Houston's, that they're separate.
That's what I was thinking of.
Yes, I was like, I know Houston's did that.
Well, so they did it and they changed.
We were talking to this, that like, they had to not just change the name.
I assume their lawyers also made them adjust the menu, so that the Hillstone menu and the
Houston's menu is defensively different.
So they don't have to put the calories on because if people found out what was going on
of those fucking burgers, again.
We'd still go.
Of course.
Oh.
Yeah.
Spinach dip?
Yeah.
How many calories?
I don't care.
I never care.
More calories, please.
More calories for my money.
Wow, what a deal.
There's so many calories.
Yeah.
Hey, I'm sorry, can I get some calories on the side to dip?
All right, we'll be right back.
Sometimes it's best to double down.
Other times you've got to double back.
Either way, it's time for second thoughts.
Adam and Sona, I have a, I've had a dynamite time with both of you tonight.
But my producers have given us on a list of moments from this evening show that they think went bad and that I should regret.
If you have any moments of regret from tonight, please think about them.
You're free for you to share them.
Let's see. From the monologue, I very quickly brought up children with eating disorders and mass shootings.
But what the audience doesn't know is that there was also a joke about suicide that we cut.
And I brought the energy down, and it took, I had to fight basically for the next hour to get you back.
And that's on us. That's on us. And we talked about it beforehand, and we should think about that as a lesson going forward.
Yep, I did not have enough goodwill built up for the active shooter joke.
You guys hated the abortion wigs joke.
And then I riffed on it, which you also hated.
You're really, you doubled down on that.
Of course I did.
You tripled down.
And I was like, wait, does that mean one person has wigs?
Like, she has multiple wigs because she has multiple abortions.
She's just abortioning all over the place?
What's interesting is you thought one wig per abortion.
I thought multiple wigs for one abortion
because she's moving through different jurisdictions.
But that's the beauty of a joke like that.
It's art.
It's up to you to interpret it how you feel it.
You thought it was a woman having one wig for abortion.
Why do you need a new wig for your next abortion?
Is this back seven the future?
Back seven in the future.
I flubbed back seven the future.
The one joke that didn't make everyone mad at me.
And then once people got it, you beat it to death.
Yeah, beat it to absolute fucking death.
It would have been so good if you didn't flub it.
I leaned into that riff pretty hard about having a Bugatti.
But I liked it.
Yeah.
Adam, have you ever seen the show Girls?
No.
Yep.
Okay.
You got to know the audience.
Yeah, that was a mistake there.
I said to Zona immediately.
Hey, there are a lot of Armenians in L.A.
Then took the world's longest boss and said, which is good?
I remember that.
What was that about?
And there were so many things running through my mind, like, oh, no, does he hate us?
Why is he pausing?
I'm glad you clarified.
You think it's good, because I didn't know what you're...
We didn't know, wasn't clear.
I compared Conan O'Brien to a big dog who doesn't live very long.
I like this segment a lot.
And that's our show.
Thank you so much, Adam McClure.
of possessing. There are 67 days until the midterms. We'll be back next week with Lauren
Lapkis, Brian Possein, and Trinity the Tuck. Have a great weekend.
Love it or Leave It is a Cricot media production. Our show is produced by Kendra James, Bill
McGrath, Kelsey Gante, and me, John Lovett. Our production team includes Halle Keeper,
Sarah Lazarus, Rahman-Borcelino, Peter Miller, David Tolls, Claudia Shang, Jay Banks,
Gavin Purcell, and Matt DeGroote. And our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild
of America East.
