The Adam and Dr. Drew Show - Classic # 235: Exploring The Bowl Pt. 1

Episode Date: July 1, 2025

Adam and Drew open the show with Drew examining Adam's old high school yearbook. This leads into a conversation about why certain groups of people are able to get out of high school and move on to higher education and others are somewhat relegated to menial jobs. They then turn to the phones and take listener phone calls on alternative treatments for prostate cancer, Adam's thoughts on coaching pop Warner football and how to develop and hone hyper-vigilance.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. Well enjoy this throwback episode. It is number 235. We're going deep cuts here back to May of 2015. It's entitled Exploring the Bowl. You'll have to listen to understand that. Amongst other things, we're going to look at old high school yearbook from Adam. And of course, that has been a source of entertainment for the last 30 years. And we're going to talk about why some people are able to get out of high school and move on to higher education and some do not.

Enjoy Exploring the bowl. 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 it on. No choice but to get it on, Mandy. Get it on, man. Thank you guys for tuning in. Thanks for sharing. Thanks for giving us a nice rating on iTunes and watching us climb the charts. It's all in the family here, man. Thank you for making it possible, man. Good day, Dr. Drew. Say good day, sir.

Say good day to you. This is weird looking at your yearbook. Much to get to. Yes my yearbook was sent to me by a listener, a fan. I think they gave it to us in Chicago. Somebody who went to North Hollywood High? Evidently it's got a... Now yearbook was a double-edged sword for me because I You know that part where you're supposed to sign everyone's yearbook. Yeah, I Couldn't spell or write Good enough to say anything. Yeah, but have a good summer

You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah, and it was it was weird. All right, right? I'm right. Sorry drew get your face out of that. So, you know, I'm having a weird reaction to this. Mm-hmm. Two things. One is I was sort of expecting it to be much more like a bunch of wild animals documented here the way you described your experience there. People look kind of well-pressed out. Well, look at the cover. Yeah, yeah. But that's the other part. That's the other part I'm gonna have to do, which is I remember this period of history so vividly.

I feel like I was there. Like, I know exactly what, I know what it felt like to be there in that crowd that day. All right. I know what the temperature is outside. I know what everyone was wearing. Let me, let me.

I know what it smelled like out there on the field. It's weird. Yeah. Well, let me explain something, and then say the thing I've said about everybody all the time. By the way, you know what was torturous to me is I had a great sense of humor and I couldn't spell or write or anything. So I had a pretty good vocabulary and a good sense of humor, but all I could write is have

a great summer. Right, right. Because I couldn't spell the words, you know, and the person would give it to me and I'd go oh it's Neil and I'd have some joke about Neil but it involved three words that I couldn't spell so that's right Neil have a great summer so what I try to explain to people all the time as you look at the cover of this yearbook and Gary will throw it up on the website you guys want to see it you look at the cover of this yearbook Gary will throw it up on the website you guys want to see it you look at the cover that yearbook it's a

random shot of the grandstands at a pep rally or football game or something an assembly of something you see black you see Hispanic you see Asian you see white you see Jewish you see it all. In that just a small- It looks like a Benetton commercial. Yeah, it's a small, it's the bleachers. It probably, show it to me, Drew, it's front and back, but it ends up covering probably 30 feet right to left,

maybe 24 feet right to left, and then up and down about 12, 14 feet. In that, you just see every color, every religion, and every everything in that school. It's quite a mix. It's quite a mix. It's quite a mix. And by the way, it's not segregated. Everyone's all mixed together. Everyone's all mixed together. Now, a Certain percentage of those kids went to Stanford. Yeah, you see a lane cow. Yeah, what do you think they were? All right, who Jewish kids right? Yeah, who else the

Somebody's african-american females. No, no The Asian. Right. Why? Because the parents were abusing them? Well, let's just, can we do this Drew? As a man of science, let's get rid of the variables and use the constants here. We all went to the same school. We all showed up at this place every day. We all attended the same classes and had the same teachers. So can we remove North Hollywood High from the equation? You know what I'm saying? Right. You're sort of making a weird genetic argument too though. No. I'm saying-

You could be, you could be making- We blame the schools. Right. We blame the school for the black kid who had to go back to the inner city and the Mexican kid who had to go dig holes on a construction site. And by the way, plenty of white kids,

we never talk about them, who had to go to the construction site and dig ditches too, as I did, but we blame the school. Well, not the school, the school to prison pipeline. All right, what about the kids that went to Stanford? And it was the same school. That's the part they never talk about. We talk about this school sends all the kids to prison. No, I think people today, don't get pissed. I think people today would go, well, the parents

of those kids would love to have the time and the experience to be able to dedicate to their kids homework and stuff, but they're working a second job, and they're struggling, and they're pissed off, and they're not in a mood, or they're fatigued. Not in the mood? Like your mom. You know, that they're- My family was broken but there was some of some of what that she was dealing with was the stress of the financial situation she was in no she was she was

lazy basically and didn't an apathetic depressed but apathetic but didn't care my mom didn't care and my dad didn't care whether their kids went to college. Do you think that's all the kids that didn't go? That they had parents that didn't care or could they be parents that were stressed and freaked out or you know you know I mean I mean there's things stacked against. Well you making excuses for them is not a good start. It's not certainly no remedy to the problem. Well you always talk about labeling and trying to understand and you know, defining things. Stressed and freaked out over homework?

No, over their socioeconomic situation and their financial... Everybody historically has been poor. Historically. Yes, historically. Yeah. It does not stop you from lighting a candle and doing your fucking homework. Does it? No. No. So how do you how do let's look? It's so I guess one of the interesting question. Listen, there's one guy I Got out of this shit

One guy who got out of what well all the Jewish guys were fine. The parents were together They're intact and they focused on Alright, So parents staying together, good thing. More likely to have the kids go to Stanford. Not more likely, the only shot that fucking kid has. The kids go to Stanford, the parents together. Yeah, I'm focusing on homework. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well that's what I'm saying. We all started at the same place. No, I understand your point. So here's what I'm saying. Forget about Jewish, black, white, whatever. Let's just look at

a group. A group of different people, okay? We'll do the snitches and the sneeches, but let's just let's let let me let me work it let me work it to you this way. Yeah. Okay. Um, we'll turn everyone into candy. Let's work M&M's, Mike and Ike's, Good and Plenty, and Skittles. They all went to the same bowl, but the Mike and Ike's and the Skittles went off to Stanford, or they did what we wanted them to do. What's good for society, what's good for them. And the other ones. Good for the bull. Good for the world, yes, yes.

The other ones took menial jobs and dug ditches and were uninsured and didn't pay much in taxes and so on and so forth. So, how much time do we wanna explore, how much time do we want to invest in exploring the bowl? The bowl is just where they all landed. Why? So we can take the bowl, the bowl is North Hollywood High. Let's not examine the bowl, they were all there. How did they escape the bowl? Now we can look into that. Okay. Well, let's see.

Families intact. Hmm. By the way, yes, generations of this. Oh. So that there's- Well, that's interesting, right? Yes. So how do you, that's a pretty tall order.

Not really. I'm doing it. Didn't take generations, generations to do it. We'll see. Well, I'm raising my kids with my wife and I'm paying for everything and I'm making sure they get their homework done every night even though I vehemently disagree with it. The point is this, how do we scientifically approach this problem? Do we just go to the Huffington Post and announce there is a school, there's a bowl, the prison pipeline and everyone's getting all the candies getting sucked into it except for not the

Skittles and the Mike and Ike. They got a pipeline that goes to Stanford. So how do we reconcile this? Well I know what the answer is, I've always known what the answer is, but you see a pile, you see a sea of faces could not be more diverse. And they all ended up in the same bowl. So how did some of them get out and flourish and others went back into the pipeline? In a way, one of, I would argue and some would argue that affirmative action would be a solution

to some of your concerns. No. Right? Because that would start the generational process. You don't need to start a generational process. You can do it in one. But I'm just saying that that's a pretty strong argument for affirmative action. You don't need, you know, ten generations climbing the ladder one rung at a time. Yeah, I'm saying send some of these kids that have potential but are struggling because of the parents were lazy whatever and Send them to Stanford and let's start this thing. Well first off you say parents. It's parent parent in most cases Number two those kids aren't gonna do well in Stanford if they weren't doing well at North Hollywood High No, no number three. Well, I mean you're making room by booting out one of the people who deserves to be there

Which is unfair to that person I don't disagree with that. All right, but I do say one of the based on the Mike and Ike We'll throw a few M&Ms up to Stanford you might not the brown ones Yellows fine So what you talking about yes, Yeah, that's what I mean. Now, listen. I'm saying we can think of many ways that the government can solve this problem, except for guess what the government can't do?

Solve any problems. Right. Other than that, by the way, it is a capital idea, pardon the pun, that the government solves problems. Yeah. Here's the only, that the government solves problems. Yeah, be nice. Here's the only caveat. Doesn't work. The government is super shitty at solving problems.

Yeah. Okay, so I have a better solution. Let's focus on the problem, let's call the problem what it is, and let's solve it ourselves. Yeah. Right. I don't hear much discussion at CNN

about what the cause of the problem is. For a group of people that is very much into science, they certainly ignore almost all the data that involves this problem. They don't ignore data as it refers to global warming, then they're all about data. This problem, not so data-driven. Not a much This problem, eh, not so data driven. Not a much, speaking of data, where is data? Only mommas around. Powerful.

All right, so you see a group of all different people that all went to the same place, and some became lawyers, and then me and Ray and Chris and all my Mexican friends went to the construction site and dug ditches. Well what was the through line? Huh, Ray's parents divorced, my parents divorced, Chris's parents divorced. No focus on education. No concern on education. Nobody took the SATs.

Nobody did anything. Dug ditches. Okay. What if my parents had stayed together? What if they'd focused on education? May have been a different outcome. May have been able to take up some of those college offers that were given to me. So what is the answer?

Well, super simple. It's not complex. It's not layered. We don't need to sit back and have a long discussion about it. Well, the complex part is getting everybody to stay together and to have marriages and families. That's just crazy complex. I mean, why don't why? Not complex. No, I don't know why it has to be so complex, but it is. I mean, people don't do it. Well, you know, getting people to start, the trend is still in the wrong it. Well, you know, getting people to start, the trend is still in the wrong direction. Well, first thing there needs to be is... Consensus, I guess.

Not a consensus, there needs to be pressure to do it. People need to be shamed. Yeah, but the pressure would have to be intense. Right, it'd be intense. I was like, you need the church back in the game or something. Well, the idea that, you know, once in a while people send me an article on the school to prison pipeline and they talk about all the major problems that are causing the school

to prison pipeline, families disintegrating is not part of the discussion. No, it is becoming part of the... No, not in the articles that get sent to me. I hear it more and more. I'm hearing a little bit, but still I don't see it changing. All right, it's gonna be awesome. Also, I don't know, we haven't brought it up,

but I haven't talked to you about it, but Scott Mason passing. Yeah. Yeah, one of the pioneers over at K-Rock. I really, just the the Historical presence guys been there since the 70s One of the first guys to host loveline. Yep Scott space and Mason

Nicest guy ever to really never got never a bad negative word about anybody or anything No, I I did not I wasn't close with him But I he was one of these guys where you didn't go out and have a beer with him But you knew him well. Yeah, like cuz he was always there I did love playing with him for a couple of years and he was always working. Yeah, he was just There I guess the reason you couldn't hold him down to have a beer with him because he's always on the move like putting out fires,, technical stuff. Yeah, it's really sad. Nice guy. Always had health issues. Well, he had bona fide systemic lupus

erythematosus and he's one of the first males to present and the only male on record to present with exudative pericarditis. Wow. Yeah, the lining of his heart became inflamed from the autoimmune reaction of the lupus and actually had to go in and strip off his pericardium. Your heart sits on a sac, it's called the pericardium, and that can get filled with fluid, get inflamed, refill with blood, the various things. And his got inflamed and stuck to his heart and he had to have it peeled off. How old?

That was years when he was in his 20s. What did he make it to? What age? He must have been close to 55. Yeah, 55. And he died of kidney disease related to his lupus, which is what most lupus patients do die of. And Bean gave Scott his kidney.

Oh, that's right. And poor Bean. Oh, my God. And that was like a couple years ago. Well Scott Mason was just one of the One of the guys Who was behind the scenes a lot of the time he was on the air Uh as well, but he was more In the shadows building this juggernaut and was there from the beginning, right? Yeah

Yeah, and he made K-Rock what it was today he had he was very tight with Rick Carroll the guy sort of invented the rock of the 80s format you guys remember that's what started K-Rock and Rick Carroll died of AIDS yeah I hope Scott wrote down some of those stories somewhere because he knows he saw it all happen he's it was amazing hmm well anyway he will be missed. Can you go to line five? I just glanced at that and it actually upset me. Debbie, 58, Nevada. What's going on? What's going on? My best friend's father was just, he has prostate cancer and

diagnosed with meth to the bone and his family, except for my friend, want to take him to this alternative therapy place in Santa Barbara. The charge is $65,000. Davey, what we got... I mean, I have prostate cancer. I'm part of something called the Prostate Cancer Foundation. I just spent the weekend with those guys. I got to tell you about that, too, Adam, remind me. But this is insane. An asshole of those guys. No, no, no.

Yeah, I need ammunition. Go to them. This is not the path they should go. Oh my God. We probably can't do this. We can really do something about it. The research has been progressing so fast. Go to PCF.org.

PCF.org. All the information. There's a lot of information there. There's resources there. You can see the information, there's a lot of information there, there's resources there, you can see the data. How old is he? 64. Geez, why was he? And he was just diagnosed with MAPC. They put a, he has a lesion in his hip, they had

to pin it. Oh man, he should have been diagnosed earlier, that's the sad part. Nobody has to die of prostate cancer. Go to PCF.org. Go to one of the centers that are discussed there. Right, but his family's bought into this idea that the cancer, that there's like this conspiracy to keep the cancer cure. Oh my God.

And I'm trying to figure out how to fight that. It makes me sick when I hear this. I mean, what's the... Oh my God. Well, what has the... it makes me sick when I hear this. I mean, what's the... what... oh my God. Well, what has he bought into? Forget about his family. Well, he just is scared of dying. All right, so he should be... He reads these testimonials that they've, you know, saved people's lives. They're just publishing a breakthrough. It's about to come out. I'm going to tell you about it here first,

which is that they've discovered in a significant percentage of men with metastatic prostate cancer, they have one of the BRCA genes, you know, the breast cancer genes, and those with these BRCA errors, again, it's all, what makes me want to jump out of my skin is that all the craziness is built on people's lack of understanding of biology. If we would just fucking teach biology, that really how genetics work, what a genetic error is, how cancer forms, how these clones that develop from these errors of transcription of DNA keep forming. Anyway, brocogine figures prominently in a certain percentage of men with this metastatic prostate cancer, and they've shown now that those that have the brocogine really respond

to some of the breast cancer treatments. So there's just tremendous, tremendous progress being made. So just go to PCF.org and try, I mean, ultimately everyone's got to make their choice, but I just can't stand its stupidness and insanity. Well, we are, we were talking about this last year, we're superstitious natives, and it's funny because- But we're natives who've lost their way, and some guy goes, hey, hey, natives, I got the way out. We're trying to find our way out of the volcano, I got the way out here. Fuck you, man, we can't trust you, man, I know better. Who do you think you are? You are

part of a conspiracy to lead me back into the volcano." Well, why? Well, it's because it's a narcissism. I do believe maybe it's attached to getting away from religion. Unfortunately. And I really again blame the 60s and 70s. We decided authority has no value, in fact, is to be. Yeah, but as, you know, if you think about it, you think, well... And then we don't educate people, here's the other thing. Okay, here's the thing. You think religion is not the friend of science, so most people think,

but religion is the friend of, and you don't think it's the friend of common sense, what religion is the friend of is listening to the guy in the lab coat. So we have drifted away from religion in a big way, and the further we drift away from religion, the problem, here's the thing, I'm not religious, I'm not spiritual, but I don't have a void that I fill with bullshit. And the problem is most people get away from religion, it creates a vacuum in them, and then that gets filled with bullshit, environmental allergies, a lot of stuff to do with the environment

and the globe and a lot of cures and AIDS. HIV is not AIDS, it doesn't turn into AIDS, you know, whatever thing they read, whatever FACACTA magazine, whatever conspiracy, you know, there's a second gunman on the grassy knoll, like it gets filled with something else. I like the idea that there's no religion, but unfortunately, be careful what you ask for, because now it gets filled with, oh, I'm not going to vaccinate my kids. You see what I'm saying? Yes. I would love to know what percentage of people who didn't want to vaccinate their kids would

call themselves Christian or Jewish, you know, would identify as Christian or Jewish. Now, I'm not talking about the over-the-top Christian scientists who refuse medical whatever treatment when the guy has tuberculosis. I'm not talking about the over-the-top Christian scientist who refused medical whatever treatment when the guy has tuberculosis. What I'm saying is, I don't think that's the realm of the religious person. It's the realm of the atheist who's feeling that Jenny McCarthy will become my messiah. It's fucking stupid. It's nice to go through life like me because I'm not religious and I'm not stupid,

so I don't have the void filled with your fucking Earth Day. And so I get to just look at everything from an objective perspective. It was funny. We had Brian's doctor on oncologists and he was talking about six years of making it. It's amazing. This tumor. It's amazing. And it was funny, there was a little point, I can't remember which guest asked him that, wasn't Crystallia? Oh, it was Crystallia. Yeah, Crystallia, who I like a lot, said to him like, oh, he had a brain tumor, it's an operable brain tumor. And he said to Brian, what about your diet? Do you have to change your diet? And Brian sort of naively, because Brian is a, sometimes he's a mouth of babes kind of guy, which is, we should all be that way.

Not quite so much from me. But he said, oh yeah, well, the chemo was bringing me down, so I'd have to drink milkshakes and things like that. Chris D'Alia was sitting there from a Hollywood perspective, which is if you eat enough broccoli, we can kill this thing, you know? But I'm not blaming Chris, but that's where everyone's mind goes to. Like, all right, off the red meat, onto the brocca flower, we're going to take care of this. Listen, I was with the guy this weekend that developed Avastin, the guy whose company

developed it, the guy who does angiogenesis inhibitors. Well, tell them those people are making too much money. We don't like big pharma. And I was with some other biotech guys, and they literally, we had this conversation about, they were confused by why people would say something like what Chris D'Alia said, or why they would be at all concerned about the motivation of people who create these products, because they're just brilliant scientists dedicating their life to try to make humanity better. And they literally could not, I looked at them, I said, well, people are not being educated.

They don't understand biology. And as you said, they fill their void with a lot of bullshit. And they make whatever conclusions they want based on very primitive understanding and very primitive impulses. To be fair, I don't know, I don't think Chris is one of those guys at all. No, I'm not saying Chris is one of those guys.

The knee-jerk reaction when somebody says I have cancer or tumor is okay, now more salad and less steak, and we're gonna clean this thing, you know, that's, you know, it might not eradicate it completely, but it's certainly gonna make a big difference. It goes back to the, you know, how'd you, what happened, how'd this happen to you? What'd you do to get that? Well, he probably had a polyester-filled pillow as a youth. Anyway, these guys, these guys are such, it's so amazing when you sit around people like that and just hear all their ideas that fly around all the time.

It's fascinating, right? Yeah. Super smart people. It's nice, right? Yeah. Super smart people. It's nice to hang around smart people, yeah. But they're working with the biology and constantly thinking and probably probing and developing. Podcasting isn't just about talking, it's about growing and gauging and monetizing,

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