The Adam and Dr. Drew Show - Classic #1016 You're A Better Man Than I

Episode Date: July 21, 2026

Feb 19, 2019Adam and Drew open today's show talking about the irresponsible journalism surrounding the alleged assault on Jussie Smollett. Then they talk about how cops are more likely to stop or pull over poor people vs rich people. After that they take a call from a woman asking about Veganism. Before they wrap, Drew thinks about what his life would be like if he got sleeve tattoos when he was younger. And thanks to our sponsors: Search "Blue Emu" on Amazon, enter 3DREW, Truecar.com, and Lifelock.com enter ADAMSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Recorded live at Corolla 1 Studios with Adam Carolla 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 the church. It's been going to mandate. Get it on. Thanks for tuning in and thanks for telling a friend. There we go.

There we go. Keep going. Keep going. What's for that? Yeah. All right. All right. Let's see. All right.

So, go ahead. Yeah. Hey, Kaelan, what plugs would you put up on that screen if you had a choice? I'm sorry. All right. If you had a choice. If you had a choice.

So I went, I went looking for the bourbon to buy you. Oh, this is our re-gift problem. Yes. It is a problem, isn't it? And I didn't know what to buy because there is all kinds, it turns out. And I thought it was all the. This one. Something super expensive.

Well, he gets very super expensive. See, look at this one. Mm-hmm. Look at that. It's a good pod. You're showing pictures of an owl. Wise man's bourbon. All right.

$500. $500. It's crazy, right? Wow. Now, this is what I thought we were talking about. Mm-hmm. It's $200. That's enough, thank you.

Get that. Get that one. All right. Get that one. I don't work on that one. All right. All right. We're drinking it together.

Yeah. And we're finally going to... Then we're going to consummate? Consumate our vows. Well, the vows I really care about. My vow to blow you. How about that vow? All right.

All right. All right. We've got a calls here. What do you got to say? So the bourbon was the one thing I want to talk about. Also that Jesse Smollett thing is starting to... Did we talk about that last week? We were talking about it, but I never figured out the whole thing.

That wasn't that tricky. I'm sorry, I thought it was the phone calls that, because I had them covering the old plug. Do you know what the threshold is in terms of numbers of people that need to be? That to fill the theater up, like 70, 800 people or something like that. But, I mean, they should have like a threshold. If I get 20 of my friends together, okay, we're bringing it in now. I think, but I don't know. but it's pretty much I've got to fill up the theater.

And I agree, there should be a threshold, but they just fill it up. Anyway, that's my stand-up special, and you can check that out. At tug.com, two geez. All right, now, Drew, you were saying what? The Jesse Smet thing is still a bit of a mystery. The Chicago PD is saying they may, if they can't find reasonable confirmation of an attack, they may go after him for a false claim, sort of, what they call that a false claim?

Yeah, false violation. And look, everybody, that's completely fine because there's this thing where you go, well, if you go after him for that, then people are going to be reluctant to report hate crimes. Not if they happened. You know what I mean? Yes, there's nothing to do with, yeah. There's a vehicular version of this. There's a version where I take my car to the desert and set it on five.

and then try to collect the insurance on it. And then you'll go, all right, but if they investigate that, then it's going to make people whose cars were actually destroyed by oak trees during rainstorms, they're going to be more reluctant to file a claim. No, they won't. Not if it happened. Especially if there's cameras everywhere and there it was. You've got stitches in your forehead.

There's cameras. There's a police body cam. You're talking to your agent on the cell phone that has a recording of it. This notion of like, yeah, but if you do that, it's going to make people. I hate that slippery slope thing. It's like, no, it is not. If you're an actual victim of any kind of an assault, it is not going to make you less likely. Yeah, but who's going to believe?

Well, who's going to believe you are when you present the evidence, then they will, just like they will with any crime. Because they do it. They do a lot of it with rape. They do it with hate crimes. They do it. It's like, if it happened, it happens. It's as though those crimes that are terribly. unfortunate, don't need evidence.

They just don't need evidence. You just need an accusation. Right. That's kind of the implication, right? Right. Which is Hillary Clinton said it. You have to believe the accuser, although unless she's Monica Lewinsky, then she's a bitch. Well, what I don't, here's what I don't like.

What I don't like is I think that one of the worst things you, you can do to a young person or to a young person of color or to a young gay person of color is to try to convince them that this society has it in for them because of their sexual proclivities or the color of their skin. They that is that is stifling. That is that is a that is a deal breaker for you and society. Convincing anybody that society is not going to let this happen on their watch, you know, they're going to let you be successful, they're not going to let you be whatever. That is one of the most insidious, dangerous messages that can be put forward. So, I don't take it lightly. I do not because you are cutting people off at the knee.

who want to perpetuate this myth of why try, it's the tables, it's the playing field that's slanted against you. So if, in fact, these things are frauds, things are powerful. I mean, there's not a news outlet in this country that didn't pick up on that story. And there wasn't, there wasn't anybody. who didn't see that and go, oh, my God, what kind of society are we living in?

It's 2019. I cannot believe we're still at this point. That is an extremely dangerous and wildly irresponsible story. Now, on his side, dangerous. On the news stories, irresponsible. Beyond. To just routinely say, oh, he had broken ribs. He was in the hospital.

He didn't have broken ribs. He wasn't in the hospital. Right. So please, let's not be so irresponsible. And it has a deep-seated effect that shall not go away. Well, I don't understand how journalists, why journalists don't have like a Manhattan project for self-evaluation of their tendency to exaggerate and take as fact things that are not. I mean, they should be, then they get offended when somebody says there's fake news. I don't understand how they can be offended when they should be taking it as a crucible for them to pick up and take a look at themselves.

You know what I mean? It's so weird. Yes. Again, I'm really thinking a lot about these themes and these themes. and these themes are powerful. I mean, you know. But I think the tight is turning a little bit on the sort of insanity around all this stuff. In other words, I think there are people that go, wait a minute, that's a just-so story.

What's up with this guy? I'm wondering, you can ask the question. I wonder if this is really what happened. Well, look. Two years ago, I don't think you'd ask that question. Oh, here's, look, here's. Here's the problem. A.J. Benza was sitting here when Gina broke the story.

A.J. Benza just said bullshit right in the middle of the story. It's like, what do you mean? How can he say that right in the middle of the story? He just yelled bullshit in the middle of the story. Like, that's a sad place to be. Now, I'm not going to yell bullshit in the middle of the story, but even to me, it sounds way too on the nose about everything. But you couldn't raise the issue. you two years ago. Now you can go,

you can at least start to question things a little bit. I would argue that's an improvement. So what did they find out about Jesse? Well, nothing. And so they're now and I guess they have the phone record now. They got a little bit of the phone log about his conversation with his manager.

So he turned over that because I was thinking, wait a minute, you're about to be accused of a wrongful report. The one defense you might have is, hey, look at my phone record, and you're not going to give the phone record? So he gave them the phone. record. So I'm, I wonder if something happened to him. I wonder if something did happen. They just sort of overblew the story. I don't, I don't think, I don't usually think that things happen completely

out a whole cloth. Yeah. I do, but I do think there are opportunities and then people and our society, especially the way things are going, people then sort of spin, you know, they add a couple X or zeros to it. Right. And they spin it off into something else. You know, You know, this thing of like he had bleach dumped all over him, and that turns out, well, he didn't know some liquid. Like, look, when you have bleach dumped on you, you know exactly what it is. So someone found a small container, a plastic container with, like it was like a hot sauce container. In the under the overpass where he went out of view for a second from the cameras.

And the people that turned it over the FBI said it smelled like bleach. So that'll be interesting to see what they find there. All right, well, maybe they did. So the horrible, horrible, horrible institution called the Los Angeles Times ran a article saying that the Los Angeles Peace Department is a racist institution because it was disproportionately stopping African American males, right? Right. And the LA Times in its usual duplicitous lying sack of shit way of presenting the news in a distorted fashion gave, you know, really made severe accusation. against the LAPD, it turned out that the policy was that they would send in groups of officers. They called it cops on dots.

So if there was a series of crimes, they would send in a group of officers. In those communities that were largely African American, the people they were stopping were largely African American. And that's what the L.A. Time was reporting on, the racist policy of stopping black. folks. And a high percentage of the stops resulted in firearms. Firearms confiscations. It's such, you know, I. So it was not racist.

It was just representative of that community and their instincts were solid in terms of who they stopped. Well, not everything is ever going to be equal. I'd be surprised if it was. It is insane. But if you look up data, like they have done these studies where it's like, hey, they pulled over more. African Americans than Asians or white people, guess what?

It turns out that African Americans drive a little faster and ignore a few more laws of the road, just in a group, in whole. That's just, I don't know why, but that's the way it is. Anyone, I'm sure they do this. But you and I both know they do a lot of chicken shit stops. Oh, they? A lot of chicken shit stops. What the L.A. Times will never fully experience is that. anybody who's been, anyone who lives in Los Angeles is going to get pulled over for nothing a lot.

And if they're in a community when they're... And when you're poor, you get pulled over a lot more because there's usually... They know they're going to find things. The whole life... What you're poor? No, they... You mean reasons. You mean reasons?

No. Things, reasons. No. No. Here's what I'm saying. Yeah. I've lived in this town as a poor person, and I've lived in this town as a rich person. You got pulled over more as a poor person.

Much more. But to be fair, there was more broken taillights and that kind of thing. There was a much higher likelihood if you pulled me over when I was poor, there'd be some meat on the bone. Oh, you don't have your insurance up the day. Oh, your car's not registered. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That seems chicken shitty. That seems abusive.

It is. Oh, no, listen. It's the, look, oh, when I was rich, I put, I put the stupid dealer license plates on my car. I don't get pulled over with the dealer license playing on a car because it's just not, it's just more to do. Yeah. It's like more, I don't know what that is. I got to fill out something. I got to do something.

It's just, I'll just pull over someone. Yeah, so just pull somebody else over. They know that if they pull over poor people, there's chance there's warrants, higher chance there's Orrin's higher chance of everything that gets them paid. But groups are also different. Like I'm sure women drive slower than men. Yep. I'm sure old men probably drive slower than young women.

Yep. It's not like you're pulling men over, you're pulling women over, you're pulling this group over, you're pulling that group over. It probably varies from group to group. Sure. Okay. You take a look at, take a look at Hispanics.

I don't know what they're, what they're, you never hear about them being pulled over and rousted. They're always driving while black. No, but what I'm saying is, is Hispanics, if you're here, let's put it through this way, if I went to Mexico and I didn't have my documentation together and I needed to drive for a living like roofer or how,

you know, gardener, whatever it is, I drive in a certain way. I, when I had no car insurance and know anything, I drove a certain way, which was much more in the lines, so to speak. 12 and 2. All right, we got a call up there. All right, let's talk to line 4. Angelica. Hi, guys.

Hi, guy. Hey, I called a couple of weeks ago. I was asking, I was talking to Drew about the Beyond Burger at, um, Carl's Jr. Oh, yeah. Now, you were saying how, like, they make it taste just like real meat. Like, obviously, we want it. I was talking about the, really I was talking about the Impossible Burger had, I'd had at, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um,

but yes, that the Carl's Jr had something similar coming out, right. Now, my question is, you guys are both anti-sugar, but, we've had artificial sweeteners around for much longer than, you know, the impossible burger. So I feel like, well, we also, that also tastes good to us. Why do we want that if it's not good for us? Who said it's not good for us? I mean, why do we want sugar if sugar isn't good for us? Sugar is especially good for us when we're growing up on a savannah where calories are limited.

and it's extraordinarily adaptive for us to be extremely motivated to pursue carbohydrates and sugar because until we conquered the food chain the way we have, that was how we survive, was by pursuing carbohydrates. That's why we created breads because we could store them and keep them and use them and they could harden and we could have hard tack and we could take these things and eat our sugars later in small, small, small amounts. But now we just go nuts because our evolutionary heritage has it that we crave these things in ways that we can't control very well. So, see, but are you taking anything to lower your cholesterol yet? Is true?

I've been on cholesterol meds for 15 years. See, I... And the problem is my cholesterol was the highest on the cholesterol meds when I was eating a plant-based diet. and there's a theory that some people, and I guess I'm one of these people, and again, I'm not recommending this because we don't have the data on it yet, but my cholesterol on a meat diet was the best it's been in my life. My triglysteroides were 70. My HDL was 70. My LDL was 85 or something. I've never had that good of cholesterol reading in my life. It was never that good on medicine. crazy. And I don't have a good explanation for it, though there are researchers out there

trying to work on figuring out why somebody like me responds like that. Can I bring this up? Yeah. I think the concept for us was always meat has fat in it. And so we don't want to get fat or we don't want the cholesterol. So stay away from the fat. Hold on. There's a garbonzo bean doesn't have fat.

So we'll eat a garbonzo bean. and I but I'm going to try to draw up something and you you tell me I always complained where did all these peanut allergies come from right and then I kept saying why are you removing all the peanut butter from the house why not just start exposing and and they'd say well because they're because they're allergic to it I'd go well maybe they're getting them more and more allergic to it because of less and less exposure and maybe there's some line that can be drawn that it's not necessarily the meat and the fat that give the thing. There's some correlation there. Yeah, there's something, and everyone's biology is a little different. And some people actually, it's the most of the circulating cholesterol is actually produced by the liver in response to insufficient intake of cholesterol. That's one theory.

Again, as I've talked to you as it pertains to Kate Shanahan, who's a biochemist and a physician, She's somebody you can look to to reliably give you an analysis of this science. And as she told me, she goes, body is, physiology of nutrition is too complex to really say anything. And I totally sign off on it. But Angelica, are you, are you vegan? Yes. Okay. How's that working for you?

It's, I mean, I feel really good. I have a lot more energy. Excellent. How much? Let me ask this if you can parse this out. How much of vegan is health versus an ideology in a philosophy and not wanting to hurt animals or add methane to the ozone? How much for you?

For me, it's 100% about the animals. The health and the environment are benefits. But, I mean, like once you see the way, that they treat the animals and like the things that we do to them. That is what changed, that is what changed my mind. But, you know, I'm healthier and I feel better about myself. Cool. I don't want to sound like Pops Carole over here, but how are you on the subject of

third trimester abortions? I'm actually, well, I do like the idea. that the animals are, that's an easy question, but kids being pulled out of the regime with spiked tongs, I got to think about that one. That's morally, I have to give that some thought. Because I know where she's probably at with this, but all I'm just saying is, I don't know, feels a little inconsistent, I guess. Look, I don't think that nine-month-old babies should be aborted.

That's insanity. Okay. But there should be a period in the beginning where they're, can take a pill. I think that's totally acceptable. All right. Where should, how long should that, where should we stop the abortions? I don't know exactly. What do you think? You can tell me.

Once you can stop taking the pill for it, like, you know, if you have to remove it forcibly, then maybe it's a baby by then. Okay. That's just my personal, you know, that's consistent. See, I would say most. people that are vegan and are worried about animals are for late-term abortions, which to me it's like, all right, one animal's a human and the other animal's an animal, and I get it. You care about cows and chickens.

I think it's noble. Just be completely consistent with it. Yeah. Count kids as humans. Most vegans, I think, are, you know, start left wing, but there's a lot more of us that are more conservative, I think. All right. I'm, I get it.

and look, I don't look at vegans any differently than I look at Buddhists in the sense that, look, you're, in a way, you're better man than I. And you've chosen a lifestyle that. And you live by it, too. And you live by it. And I admire that. Yeah. I do. I couldn't live your lifestyle.

Now, there's a part of me that feels like it's in compensation for something oftentimes. And that worries me a little because I don't like, look, I make fun of guys in cowboy boots with stupid tribal tattoos because it feels like you're trying to push. It's not like you love boots and you love tattoos. You're trying to push out, push something in company. You know, maybe you were bullied when you were nine. And now you're not going to be bullied. You're going to be a steroid junkie and you're going to get the tribal tattoos, right? So that's compensation for something.

My feeling is I'd like you to get in touch with whatever you're compensating for and work on that rather than live a life in cowboy boots. We have to have a bigger conversation about tribal tattoos. Okay. Because I think if I were 17 now, I would have gotten one. You do? And I want to know what that means. Hang out.

You get one now. Hang on. Okay. This may be a whole show. So, yeah, as you were saying that, what do you mean by tribal tattoos? Is that those things that go around like the arm That looks like a like a Like inverted triangles in a row or something

Yeah there's that I mean I feel the same way about barbed wire tattoos Or just sleeve I think when I was like that Maybe 90 maybe more like 21 I was working out a lot And I just have this feeling I would have been a lunkhead

And done something like that I don't think you would have I think I was that stupid I think I was Well, it's not like they didn't have tattoos. Yeah, but it wasn't everybody that has a tattoo then. Then it was like, oh, gosh, kind of a sleeve tattoo. Aeron addict? What?

Right. Yeah, I don't, I was always... You know what? The guys that did that were on steroids then. That was sort of the combo. It was steroid plus tribal tattoo. And if I weren't so scared of the effect of steroids, I probably would have done that too. That's what much of a fucking idiot I was.

I don't know. I don't like to give you credit. For being an idiot? I mean, I like to give you credit for being an idiot. I don't think you would have. Really? I probably would have pussed out, huh? No, I just think you're more pragmatic than that.

First off, you would have found out how much it cost. Oh, yeah, that would have been that. That have been that. But I also, I would have worried about my future. Oh, what if somebody sees this? And I'm in a hospital. On my sleeves are open. So that would have been weird.

That would have messed me up. Yeah, I would have always had a kind of... But what's the matter with me that I would have thought about doing that even? That bothers me. I don't think you would have thought about it. But I think I would have. That's my feeling. I think you're trying to bother yourself sort of retroactively bother yourself.

Scratching my itch. You wouldn't have done it. You didn't know me in that phase. You got me about 10 years later. I guess. I don't know. I never had any thoughts about anything that didn't make sense. sense. Right. And it, the reason

I think it's probably true is it deeply troubles me. So it's probably the case, right? I couldn't, you know, when I was young here, I couldn't even drive a full-sized pickup truck because I was like, these old Japanese things, the bed is almost as big. You can, you know, if you got to pick up five sheets of plywood, you could pick it up in your Ford F-250. Yeah. Or you could do it in your old Japanese Nissan thing. It would be the exact same thing.

Yeah. And these guys would come rolling on the loft, their big four-wheel drive, knobby tires and looking all cool and everything. I was like, yeah, but it's a gas mileage. Yeah, no, no, no, no. Where do you park? I don't park it. And blah, blah, blah.

The fuel, it's got to cost so much. I'd be a barrow. Right, right. Well, I worked in a group of people who routinely did that. I was like, hey, man, look at my truck. I got a lift get on it, whatever. And I was like, oh, I just drive this little pile of crap. Because even in a truck, I didn't want that kind of.

of weird, useless attention. It brings up really interesting topic about spending and buying and stuff. Tomorrow we'll talk about this. All right that down. So until next time, I'm going to Dr. Zay. Mahalo. All right, if you've been putting off car shopping because it sounds like a whole thing, buying your car online on Auto Trader makes it way easier, like almost easier than ordering your coffee easier.

Really? You can shop tons of cars online, compare prices, check financing, and trade-in options, all from wherever you are. And if you want to start online and still go to the dealership for a test drive, you can do that too. Really? What I like is the flexibility. Start online, finish at the dealer,

or the other way around. Your info stays with you, so you're not starting from scratch. Plus, you're working with local dealer listings, so there are real people behind the scenes. And when you're ready, you can pick it up or have it delivered. So whether you know exactly what you want

or you're still scrolling trying to figure it out, AutoTraders got options that fit how you want to buy. Buy your car online on AutoTrader. Really?