The Adam and Dr. Drew Show - #1802 Where's the Fire in the Belly?

Episode Date: December 11, 2023

This week, Dr. Drew checks in from Las Vegas, sharing his recent worries for the future of the economy at the hands of this next generation and their lack of motivation. Adam reminisces on the good old days of hard labor and discipline, the road to carpentry apprenticeship, and the empathy of a construction foreman. Please Support Our Sponsors: The Jordan Harbinger Show - Available everywhere you listen to podcasts

Hold on to your jingle bells. Pluto TV has all your holiday favorites for free. Enjoy Christmas classics like Scrooge with Bill Murray or Last Holiday with Queen Latifah. Plus, dive into festive channels like Holiday Movie Favorites by Lifetime or Hallmark Movies and more. Download the Pluto TV app on all your favorite devices and start streaming holiday favorites on live channels and on demand. With thousands of free movies and TV shows, Pluto TV is your home for the holidays. Pluto TV, stream now, pay never. This is Below Deck's Captain Lee.

Listen to my new podcast, Salty, with Captain Lee. Um, don't you mean our podcast? Uh, yeah, I guess I do. Anyhow, listen to Salty with Captain Lee, co-hosted by my assistant, Sam. And we will be talking about the latest pop culture news and all the gossip every week. So does this mean we have to talk by ourselves, about ourselves, or can at least have some guests on? I don't know, I find myself pretty interesting.

But yeah, we can have some guests on. Some of our reality TV friends and some stars. Works for me. Listen to Salty now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Recorded live at Corolla One Studios with Adam Corolla and board-certified physician and addiction medicine specialist, Dr. Drew Pinsky. You're listening to The Adam and Dr. Drew Show. Yeah, get it on.

Got to get on. Dr. Drew's board-certified physician. He's in Vegas. Yeah, Vegas, baby. How's it going over there, Drew? It's good. he's in Vegas. Yeah. Vegas, baby. Um, how's it going over there, Drew?

It's good. I'm here with the V shred guys. It's been fun. And, uh, Vegas, you know, it's so funny to me.

I, I'm have these weird sort of reflections on COVID and it's not about Vegas. It's about COVID, right? Where I just see people out and having fun and doing things. And I think, Oh my God, that makes me feel so much better. I want people to live their lives. And it just immediately throws me back into the lockdown

and the shelter-in-place days. I wonder why I was depressed during all that, for God's sakes. And what's weird to me is I think we live in a time when people going on and doing shit and building shit and enjoying shit is sort of disdained in some weird way, even though people are going ahead anyway, it's sort of not cool or something. Am I feeling that right? Well, I think what you're responding to is when you are, I mean, I remember it well. When you are in an environment, when one is in an environment where one is not thriving,

and then in that environment, there are a group of people that seem to be thriving amongst you and around you, it's difficult, like emotionally. And, you know, I can sort of, I mean, for me, I remember that's sort of above water. I wasn't really treading water. I was not thriving. And I was in the, what would be the lower, my graduating class was 570 and I was 500, you know, so whatever, whatever that math is, how you get to 500, uh, you know, 570 would be the lowest. And I was at 500, you know, I mean, to be technical, I think I was like 497 or something out of 570. But out of the 570, 30 of those kids just dropped out or never showed up. You know, I mean, I imagine, you know, two of them died and 40 moved.

You know, I don't think there were – there weren't 70 kids below me who showed up every day and tried you know yeah and I didn't like that environment like I I was uncomfortable not thriving and and being surrounded by people who were you know and I oh I always you, had that, I could remember these like distinct moments where like I was signed up for something called high school math, you know, as you know, and it wasn't algebra, you know what I mean? And, and I, yeah. And, and I'd be talking to a friend, you know, on the football team or something. And he'd say, well, I took that. I signed up for AP Calculus, you know.

And I remember just feeling kind of shamed, you know. And so I had my fantasies weren't around me thriving. They were about the Hall of Records burning down. That's where my fantasies lied. You know what I mean? I didn't sit around and think about being a better student or what I could do to achieve. But that's the thing that kills me,

is that you weren't even offered that. I mean, if I were a part of the LA Unified District in any fashion, I would call you in and go, how did we F this up so bad? What's your insight as somebody who is the subject of this abuse? You know what I mean? They could learn something from you. Well, but they had apathy and not empathy. Yeah.

You know, apathy. They wanted to get paid to go home, to get along, and not to stir up anything or point out any of their shortcomings, which maybe I would have done. Not me personally, but I was an example of a system that wasn't really working. So I don't think they were interested in – fat guys not interested in stepping onto a scale, I imagine, right? Right. So there was that element. And so I didn't like it. I was like, you know, and during COVID or during whatever, you sitting at home in your bathrobe day drinking and looking out the window seeing the neighbor building a tree house with his kid doesn't feel good. feel good uh looking out the window and seeing your neighbor in his bathrobe with a bottle of scotch that somehow feels better you know no see i have the i have funny i have the opposite well

no not to you not yeah uh not to healthy people okay okay but that's not most people okay got it most people aren't thriving other people aren't thriving i get depressed i i want to see people i i'm i'm worried about young you know people in their 20s and 30s now because they they are under the thumb of a horrible economy and inflation and it bothers me i don't know why it bothers me so much but it does yes well you have the empathy that North Hollywood High was lacking back in the day. But, you know, and then I went from there to a construction site where I dug ditches. But I did see... Well, Mike Stramatt had empathy, right?

My foreman. God, he was so brutal. I mean, he was off the charts mean. But, I mean, he had some, you know, just over-the-top policies about. He's your foreman, your construction foreman. Yeah, I mean, he just, I mean, he had a few moments. Like, he lined everybody up on a Monday morning, all the grunts, you know, all the labors. He lined us all up and he just went, one of you is going to quit this week because I'm going to ride you so hard.

I'm going to ride you so hard this week that one of you is going to quit. And that's how it's going to work. And it's like meanwhile did anybody drop out right then okay i'm out no there was nowhere to go but yeah yeah all these guys did was just work all day you know i myself included there was no clowning about or grab ass there was no sitting around looking at their phone there was no clowning about or grab ass. There was no sitting around looking at their phone. There was no phone. There was no anything.

They literally, they just worked all day. There was no, I have no, there was no motivation for him to say to this group of, you know, two or three white guys and two or three Latin guys who just showed up and just worked all day, uh, that he was going to get one of us to quit because he was going to be so brutal, you know, riding us, but there was, we just didn't do anything. I mean, I remember. You were already the most abused people on the, on the site, right? You were already the ones that were being abused most completely. And he had to jump onto that, which is a weird instinct. Yeah. The site would have subcontractors, plumbers, HVAC guys who'd sort of show up and do their own thing, but they weren't,

you know, really, they were subs, you know, they weren't really under his jurisdiction per se. Then there'd be carpenters, you know, in the house building, you know, doing carpentry work. And then there was us who were outside digging and also inside digging digging uh pilasters or uh digging uh caisson holes and by hand and it was it was really brutal dirty dangerous sort of shitty stuff but no there was no reason to say that to any of us we were just grunts making the least amount of money on that job you know making eight bucks an hour taxes being taken out just digging ditches and moving trash, you know, just all day. There was no, you know, it's not like there was a telephone or a folding chair or anything. People just on their feet just working the entire time. How long did you actually do that before you were able to go on to something a little, up the food chain a little bit?

do that before you were able to go on to something a little up the food chain a little bit um i i i dug for probably it would have been about three weeks let's say straight and we were doing these long days we're kind of behind and so so we're doing 10-hour days. And sometimes we do a lot of six-day a week, a lot of Saturdays. And I was just digging the whole time. And at a certain point, I took one of my checks and I went down to the equivalent to the Home Depot. But it wasn't a Home Depot. It was like contractor supply or something. And I had my measly check I was making because taxes were being taken out. I was making like 238 bucks a week, like after taxes or something. And I went in, I bought bags, tool bags and a hypoid saw, like a skill saw, and, you know, tape measure and a square,

you know, the stuff you needed to be a carpenter. And I remember very gingerly and tentatively sort of showing up on Monday with my bags, you know, my shiny tool bags, which, by the way, Monday with my bags, you know, my shiny tool bags, which, by the way, the brand new shiny tool bags are, you know, mark of a green horn. You know what I mean? That's the mark of a guy with no experience. But I sort of put them on and I think Stramat just sort of saw me wearing the bags and sort of said, what do you need to drop the bags and get in the hole? A shovel, you know, so I, I work long enough digging and doing all the excavation in this very unique job that just involved tons of hand digging. I don't know. Um, long enough to finish all the digging. And then once we finished all the digging,

it was kind of time to move into the house and sort of help out with the stuff that was in the house. So then you sort of move towards some carpentry, even though it ended up being a lot of demo and trash and, you know, stuff, horrible stuff like that. But eventually, once I got in the house, I got under the wing of a couple of carpenters, one of them named Rick, who was kind of doing the finish thing. And Rick had a little bit of a personality and kind of liked me. You know, I was likable. It's kind of funny. You know, I worked real hard and I was, you know, I was likable. It was kind of funny. You know,

I worked real hard and I was, you know, Johnny on the spot. I didn't miss a day. I was always willing to do whatever he asked me to do, whatever. And then I was sort of, you know, joke around a little bit. And, you know, Rick, Rick had a little sense of humor and was a little smarter than the average, you know, sort of meathead on the site. And he sort of said, well, why don't you be my apprentice? Help me out. And then sort of went about showing me, you know, the techniques of how to rip stuff and do stuff.

I want to stop right there. That is an interesting story that I don't think is told sufficiently to young people, which is this idea of – I don't want to put it under the rubric of apprenticeship per se, even though that's what this was, but it reminds me exactly of what Jimmy did with you as well, right? And so these stories are really great lessons for how people move along in the world, particularly if they don't have the training. There's a lot of stuff these days where kids are going, they require two years of experience. I can't even apply.

And it's like, you can get in there and start to do stuff and move along if you impress and if you develop relationships. And they don't know that. Or maybe it's different now. You know what I mean? Maybe the way the law's legal system is or the way people are hired and fired has really changed. But I don't know. I think there's something to that.

Don't you? Yeah, I don't think things have changed demonstrably and that it all still applies. And it probably goes back to biblical times. Yeah. still applies and it, you know, probably goes back to biblical times, you know? Yeah. And there's not much smoke or hokum involved with it. It's just kind of show up early, stay late, have a good attitude, be of service, you know,

have the people go, I like that guy or, you know, I want him around or like. He seems capable. Just he seems capable. Let's see if we can get more out of him. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't. Organizations want to optimize what they get from employees, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know at the beginning. I don't know if I seemed capable because I was devoid of any skill, but I seemed prompt. Eager. Sort of eager and ready to go. And number three, this is something I've film sets and things like that, the directors, the people who are doing the casting ultimately will say something on the order of, is that the guy I want to spend four months with? Do I really want to be around that guy for six months or maybe a year? I got to think about that.

And if the answer is yes or an enthusiastic yes, that really increases the probability of a hire. Yes. Yes. Yes. Do you want to be around that person? Because ultimately that's what a job is. And, you know, you don't think rebuilding Dr. Fagenbaum's house in Silver Lake could be further away from Broadway. But it's the same thing. You've got to hang around for four months and deal with this person every single day you know yeah you walk on to that job site at 7 a.m every day and it's you

and rick and whoever else until four or five in the afternoon every day and then we'll do it again the next day you know so yeah it was really about yeah having a decent attitude and and and there's a social side of it like you know at some point we'd find ourselves going out to the desert and riding motorcycles you know for over the weekend and camping and having beers and smoking cigars and stuff you know just became a there was a social side of it side of it too and um yeah learn something possess a skill and then once once you possess that skill which carpentry is sort of the most basic skill in terms of your worth to society. It's just a bottom line kind of everyone needs a decent carpenter. And you'll always be, if not in demand, you'll always be employed.

And I sort of caught on to that early on and figured, well, this will be – you may not thrive in this environment, but it will keep you from having to sleep on the streets, possessing a basic skill that everyone seems to need. Were you thinking at the time about climbing out of the garage too? i mean it's not just sleeping on the street at that point it's getting the hell out of the out of dodge right well for the we're already out by then the first thing i did after cobbling together you know two months of paychecks was to get out of the, get out of the garage. With three roommates. Get some roommates, find a one bedroom apartment and, you know, strike out, strike out on my own. All right. Let me tell you about our friend Jordan Harbinger. You're about to hear a preview of the Jordan Harbinger show with a black man that befriends

members of the Ku Klux Klan. I don't support the KKK at all. I don't support that ideology, but I support people having the right to believe as they want to believe as long as they don't cross the line and hurt people. I didn't convert anybody. I am the impetus for over 200 to make up their own minds to convert themselves. It bothers me a great deal that we call ourselves the greatest nation on the face of this earth. How is it that we as Americans can talk to people as far away as the moon, but yet there's so many of us who have difficulty talking to the person who lives right next door?

We are living in space age times, but there's still too many of us thinking with Stone Age minds. For more on how Daryl Davis convinced 200 KKK members to give up their robes, check out episode 540 on the Jordan Harbinger Show. All right. Yeah. I mean, it all seems pretty linear when you look back at it. It all kind of makes sense. I see it persisting in young adults where they're just underwater with inflation and they don't see opportunity. They don't believe that they can do stuff and build stuff and advance in businesses or in jobs. And I'm just deeply troubled by that. will not have come out of its, frankly, COVID shock until they are back in the system and thriving and feeling good and excited about their lives, which they should. I mean, it's not like we're in the middle of Gaza or something here. You know, there's a lot going on they should be part of.

Yeah, I agree. You know, I think there's a certain advantage to where I was at in that I didn't have a lot of choices. I had a job that I had to do the job. There was no potential for any other job. You know, I agree. And I would argue today not so because people always contemplate living with their family of origin, which we didn't even like. We could not even like not even a possibility. But that's now an option. And you've always got your phone in your hand. So you're always kind of entertained and sort of OK, you know, even though it's false.

It's not real. Yeah. Yeah, I was. I don't know where you're at with this. Speaking of phone. But I was on a first I didn't know where you're at with this speaking of phone, but I was on a first class flight the other day and, um, I was sitting up in first class and, you know, the service wasn't really happening. You know what I mean? Can I refill your drink or would you like

something else? Or you need a water? Like I wanted a water at some point and i was just sort of sitting there and i i just got up and found the stewardess who was just sitting there in her jump seat look looking at games on her phone and i'm like i don't know like people probably go ape shit but i would kind of say if i ran an, I don't want the people who are essentially here to service this first class cabin sitting and looking at their phone in the middle of the flight. I want you on your feet, refilling shit, handing out stuff, asking people if they need a water or whatever, whatever, or another cocktail or whatever that thing is. And I thought this phone has kind of turned work. It's kind of turned every workplace into a semi workplace. Yeah. Not a full workplace, you know? Yeah. Yeah. This is that thing I'm talking about. Yeah. That, you know, when I also turned unemployment into sort of not really unemployment, you're sort of OK. When I worked, obviously there was no phones, but there were no chairs. There was no air conditioning. There was barely an indoors there. If you wanted to sit, you sat on a pile of drywall.

So there was nothing to do but work. And there wasn't even the remote possibility of you sitting down or taking a break. It didn't exist. There was lunch. Lunch was a half hour, and that was at noon. But there was no such thing as you just, you know, hanging sheetrock for three hours and then just sitting down for five minutes or something.

If the foreman walked by and you were just sitting there, they'd either fire you or start yelling at you or ask what the fuck you were doing like if you're just sitting there you'd have to have like rolled an ankle or something like stepping off a ladder you there was no it physically didn't exist where you just stopped and again not to sound redundant and like a broken record here but on the unemployment side again you're kind of you're entertained all day with your phone. You're kind of in this suspended animation.

You're living at home, looking at your phone. You know, you're just sort of this weird. Well, I'll tell you what I think. What? The chasm between rich and poor now there's always a chasm and you're never gonna live with jay-z and beyonce in malibu and you're not going out to fancy expensive restaurants per se very often. But the chasm was greater back then in that your life was impacted severely. And so you take just a simple subject, like take two subjects sort of rich and poor, transportation, automobile and uh entertainment

people rich and poor just drive a car now yeah and and and they all have air conditioning and they all work and everything steers and hangs out the road and it's got a climate control and every stereo. The stereo is good on it. You got your phone and you can get all the entertainment you want from your phone or wherever. When I was poor, you drove a beater pickup truck and that truck did not have air conditioning and didn't have a sound, didn't have a good stereo, didn't have anything. And may not have a seat. Yeah. I mean, it probably had a bench seat with no headrest.

But the point is, is you are not driving that thing to Las Vegas. Right. It wouldn't make it. Not during the summer. It would overheat. So, I mean, things were impacted. You know what I mean? Like you wanted stuff.

You didn't get that. You didn't have that stuff. And yet there was – those were the days of lifestyle and the rich and famous when people would go, oh, my God, that would be awesome. And they strive for it rather than get angry about it and want to destroy the people they're watching on TV. It was the opposite of today's emotions. Yeah. But I wanted air conditioning. I wanted a car that had air conditioning. I wanted air conditioning in my house or condo or something like I wanted all these things. And I motivated. If I had a phone and I was just playing video games and looking at pornography on it, and then you mix in the ubiquity of like edibles and things

like that. I just, you know, chewed on an edible, went down to Chick-fil-A, played some video games on my phone, sat my, you know, drove my mini cooper that had hair and stereos and everything i don't i don't know where the fire in the belly would be i'm not sure let's not let's not leave out what porn might have done to you oh man i would have been ravaged by porn you were bad enough already so i don't know you know i i think i think all of this is kind of conspiring to take the fire out of the belly and also a societal thing too, which is sort of telling men and women they're kind of the same and to sort of remove some of that onus of the matriarchy, or I should say patriarchy, you know, the sort of like you're the man. You've got to provide. You know, you've got to get out there and hustle and make a living, you know, to take care of these kids. Well, that's gone.

Right. Well, that's gone. Yeah. Right. But I had that. I had that thought, like, who's going to provide? That's true. So you better get out there and get your hustle on.

And so I don't think it's all one thing. I think it's a group of things that are kind of conspiring. Right. And so I agree. I totally agree. But my question, the thought bubble over my head constantly is how do we help them out of this? How do they get out of this? What is going to get them out of this is sort of the question I have. Is it either going to be some catastrophe that refocuses everybody and gets their priorities lined up again? Or is it going to be a thriving economy again that they just jump into?

Or both? I don't know. lined up again or is it going to be a thriving economy again that they just jump into or both i don't know i i think it's just going to be safe spaces and octagons i just think people are gonna they can't be forever they can't be forever i mean i i don't look like that well i think i think people who think alike and who have the same sort of work ethic and things like that are going to end up congregating and coming together and living in a society that has like sort of shared values. They're going to have to pay their fair share, that group. But it's interesting. I heard Thomas Sowell the other day say, what is the fair share should you get if somebody else's money right what's a fair share that you need of somebody else's money and the the correct answer the answer i was reared with at least was zero yeah i'm not

entitled to any of somebody else's money why would i be i don't care what condition i'm in why why would my fair your affairs of me yeah well that's the you know that's the the part that is worrisome reminds me of like thanksgiving uh they're giving out turkeys and in the poor neighborhoods you you know. And a lot of the residents of the poor neighborhoods got pissed off because the illegal migrants that got dropped off in their neighborhood some months earlier basically got in line ahead of them to get the turkeys, you know. And they would interview some of these poor peoples who lived in this neighborhood, and they were pissed and they, because they were saying, those are our turkeys. Now, what are we going to do? And I'm

like, there's a part of me that at first blush, I always go, yeah, those are their turkeys. What are they going to? And then there's another part of the go, wait a minute, go get your own fucking turkeys. Everybody, everybody go, everybody go find your own turkeys don't well that maybe that's how maybe that's what come of this you know yes maybe maybe well that's that kind of refocus thing i'm looking for like realignment hopefully all right let's see rancho mirage agua caliente casino i'm doing stand upup there Saturday. Second show added. First show sold out, but you can get some shows, some tickets for the second show. And then I'll be in Solana Beach.

I'll be in Naples and West Palm Beach. You need to go to adamcrawler.com and find out all the live shows. What do you got, Drew? Dr. Drew.com for the pods you like after dark. And then our streaming show Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I want to talk to Adam next show about some things I've observed on that streaming program

where I'm talking to people who have been canceled. Three o'clock, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, live. So, until next time, Adam Kroll for Dr. Drew, saying, Mahalo. Hold on to your jingle bells.

Pluto TV has all your holiday favorites for free. Enjoy our season's greetings category with nine holiday channels, including holiday movie favorites by Lifetime, Festive Fireplace, Holiday Lights, and Hallmark Movies and more. Download the Pluto TV app on all your favorite devices and start streaming holiday favorites on live channels and on demand. With thousands of free movies and TV shows, Pluto TV is your home for the holidays. Pluto TV. Stream now. Pay never.