What exactly was Adam's point about the car repair? Knowing how to change a tire or boost a battery is what makes a man? Sorry, but that's idiotic. Is it also important for a man to know how to make a fire using only sticks? Or skin a deer? Do women need to know how to sew? People need to know the skills that relate to the responsibilities they are relied on for in the era they live.
I get that there are things that can reasonably be considered to be masculine traits, but being into cars is not one of them.
You have to admit that his implication that if necessary, you should be willing and able to get into a brainless fistfight in traffic provides food for thought.
I’m sorry, the idea that car knowledge isn’t coded as masculine is laughable.
I get your point that men and women would both be well served to know the basics and I agree. However, as someone who does this for a living, I can count on one hand(and don’t need any fingers on that hand) the number of female technicians/mechanics I’ve seen in the field. I know they’re out there and that they exist, but I’ve been doing this for a while and have never worked with or seen one in the buildings I frequent. That alone is a really good indicator as to how heavily male-dominated the mechanical repair industries are. What he said is not by any means a stretch.
Of course you're right that car knowledge is coded as masculine. But that doesn't mean that if you don't have that car knowledge, you're "less of" a man. That's what he is implying when he's mocking someone for not having that knowledge. Hunting is also coded as masculine. But would anyone think it's reasonable to think someone is less of a man if they don't hunt?
I still think his point was accurate in that the breadth of baseline knowledge about cars or hunting or construction or any other example that you can pull out of a hat was much higher and more commonplace in the past.
Any current conversation about man-cards being revoked will lead to the same rabbit hole. The standards have shifted slightly for today’s society, but that’s partially his point.
I would agree with Adam's assessment because clearly we all need to know how to change a tire or jump a car. Nobody needs to know how to skin a deer to survive. You might as well be saying, why learn to cook because we have Uber Eats? Where would the "modern conveniences make life better in all ways" argument logically end?
But we *don't* need to know how to change a tire or jump a car! We can easily call AAA or a mechanic or a buddy and have someone else do it for us just fine. Just like we have people who kill and prepare our meat, there are plenty of people who can perform this job the few times in our life it arises.
Plus, if it were indeed true that we all needed to know that, then why would it be a "man" thing to know? Why wouldn't women also need to know this skill?
When I got a nail in a tire on my new car, I was surprised to find that there was no spare tire in the trunk, and I was told that the company stopped including them because it offers roadside service. I'm a tad skeptical of this. But I was going to struggle to change it without help.
For me, I know how to do enough things. A doctor ought to be able to pay someone else to make his car and his appliances and his technology work.
"...And that is a hose that is sucking backwards!" is a great line and I encourage the two of you to continue leveling accusations like this against each other in the future :)
Louisville, Kentucky I would describe as quite feminine, and generally one of the most social justice-y places outside of the West Coast.
It's also one of the most BLM cities in the country; there is a famous mural to Breonna Taylor and there's a whole story about how a BLM activist tried to shoot a mayoral candidate, the local BLM chapter bailed him out for $100,000 and gave a snarky social media response to the notion that firing a glock at a political candidate was a bad thing.
But on the feminine side, I would agree that horse culture is quite feminized, and all the classic pinstripe suits and effete accents don't exactly seem like "traditional masculinity". West Virginia and Ohio exude a way more masculine vibe than Kentucky in general, with apologies to Wilfried Reilly.
Came here to comment that. We visited Louisville for vacation last year and it was unrecognizable from the rest of Ohuckiana where I grew up. Food and drink were great though, but pride progress flags everywhere
That’ll be over in 5 minutes. I don’t think he’d mind the dog in the restaurant as much if he’s well behaved - he takes Phil E Cheesesteak to work - it’s the airplane that’s the problem. Oh now that I think about it he has that whole hygiene thing…
Never mind 😊 I’ve got to stop daydreaming on conference calls!
Haha. I think the Aceman would have a hard time with modern dance, theater, book readings, classical music and other high culture activities that I imagine Meghan being really into. This is a guy who has "football Sunday with Kimmel and some other dudes" etched in stone in his calendar.
Ah yes but don’t you think Meghan also seems like the independent sort who’d like to have a lot of her own space and would appreciate having separate interests?
Good point. I seem to vaguely recall Meghan noting that her ideal relationship would be a long-distance one where she gets to carefully curate the amount of time spent with her paramour.
Exactly! So they go on long walks with their dogs together and go house shopping every weekend. Meghan we know loves real estate and so does Adam. AND he can tell her what’s wrong structurally and decoratively while they pretend to shop and make fun of bad remodel jobs together… at least until they find two nice places just next door to each other. I really have given this some thought 😜
I believe people on the interwebz call this "shipping" where fans imagine elaborate scenarios in which two celebrities or fictional tv characters are in a dream relationship. I had forgotten about the real estate angle - good one.
Oh yes I’ve heard of that. This is my very first ship! I usually don’t give a… ship about celebrities. I’ll make an exception for CarDaum? Adaghan? Daumrolla?
Prostate examination is not effective in actually detecting prostate cancer when used as a screening test; the research on it is unfavorable and it is not generally recommended (e.g. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29531107/). At this point, it is more of a med student hazing ritual, although someone might argue it has some limited uses outside of screening.
Screening colonoscopies are more contested; the research findings are not that great but it's still widely done in the U.S. There's also a movement to go to stool testing and to do colonoscopies only if the initial test is positive. It's unclear if any of these approaches actually save lives. This is a big Vinay Prasad hobby horse.
This is a more ambiguous subject. Part of the issue is that even when people come in with symptomatic colon cancer it is one of the more treatable cancers. Part of the issue is that the DNA stool testing is quite good and if your cologuard is negative there isn't really any reason to get a colonoscopy. Part of the issue is that colonoscopy is not a risk-free intervention.
This is the big study that came out of Europe last year, which found a very slight reduction in cancer occurrence but no reduction in mortality (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36214590/). There are some other big clinical trials ongoing.
I didn't say that any individual shouldn't do it, but it certainly isn't a slam dunk. The only medical procedures for cancer prevention that I would say are unequivocally beneficial are pap smears and removing skin lesions. Lifestyle is far more important. And unlike most of the stuff we talk about here, this actually is my specialty.
At my last checkup, my doctor informed me that according to the latest findings, in the absence of actual symptoms, the prostate exam as we've known it is useless, and we can go by the PSA. He may have raised an index finger for emphasis. "So," he said, "I'm willing to forego this procedure if you are." I agreed that we should follow the science. This isn't the dark ages, after all.
PSA is also not particularly useful; the USPSTF rates it as a C, which is basically the body that decides what preventive services to recommend in the U.S. saying "eh".
Cancer screening sounds good, but in reality it is very hard to catch cancer by screening healthy people and significant amounts of harm are done by putting people through unnecessary procedures and unnecessary stress when there are false positive results.
A normal PSA level is good, but a high PSA can be caused by all sorts of problems so it doesn't really mean that you have cancer. And the follow-up testing is expensive and invasive and arguably not worth it.
This was supposed to be a reply to Erica Etelson below.
I've never seen any breakdowns by sex, but I strongly suspect that the men in this situation greatly outnumber the women.
Keep in mind that women are greatly outpacing men in college enrollment (current trends suggest US colleges could be 65-70 percent female in a couple decades - hat tip to Richard Reeves).
Due to this college gap, there could be two results:
1. More young women get jobs that allow them to live on their own.
2 Even if women graduate college and don't have "good" jobs, those who went away are used to communal living and are more likely to take on roommate to share expenses. My own anecdata suggests that people who never had the experience of residential college are wary of living with roommates so will stay with parents longer
I looked up the David Allen Grier quote and listened to the clip that was played on Coralla’s show and it seems all that DAG said was Adam was a “right wing troll” and he “couldn’t do it anymore” --as in appearing on his show. There were no mentions of white supremacy or calling Adam a racist.
So it might be that Corolla is hearing what he wants to hear.
My boys are under 30 and they live on their own in an apartment they pay for. They still come home almost every weekend. They are 20 and 23. The younger has a girlfriend. The older has a full time job. There is still some isolation and homesickness. They don’t have a social life in the city where they are living. It’s a different world where they get all of their entertainment on the phone and I think when the weekend arrives instead of going out and talking to people they come home where it’s familiar. I’m not sure how to advise them or if I can even help apart from saying stop coming home which is hard to do.
Girlfriend lives in our town and she often returns on the weekends to her parent’s house. They spend nearly every day together. They attend college in a city that’s about an hour or so away.
I agree about social media and the phone. They aren’t interested in social media and don’t post. They do use Instagram messenger to communicate with their friends. They have their hobbies-- they are into fitness and weightlifting and rock climbing at a rock climbing gym. They don’t watch TV apart from sports. I still worry a bit because there is a contrast between when I was their age -- I had a lot more friends and social activities and I wasn’t home on weekends that often. It’s different with kids now. They are alone (and mostly content it seems) in their bubbles.
Sounds like you raised independent young men with good family values.. And I agree that's quite different to how my early 20s were, but seems common for today. I don't have kids that age (or at all) but I understand why you feel concerned.
Are the majority of women under the age of 30 living with their parents too? Re: young men living with parents, are the majority just out of high school or college? Does it taper of signifantly as they approach 30? I sure hope so.
It’d be interesting to make a diagram with expected skills or skill sets for the two sexes over time. Changing a tire is definitely on its way out with fix-a-flat compressed air goop cans and “drive while flat” tires…but it’s always more attractive (regardless of your sex) and convenient to be able to DO THINGS rather than be ignorant/incompetent.
The fighting bit shows Adam’s age. He doesn’t realize how many people are carrying concealed these days—the time of public macho confrontation is over. You are likely to get shot if you get out your car and shove someone.
As a 50 year-old man, my wife expects me to be able to do “man stuff”—build/remodel our house, basic car stuff, cut down trees, back a trailer, hunt (yes, skin and quarter a deer), confront a burglar, etc. And while she would be embarrassed for me to get into a stupid physical confrontation with a stranger, she would be appalled if I was not prepared for violence if it was necessary to protect her and/or our kids.
If I fail to pass on these skills to my kids (son and daughter) isn’t that on me? I wonder if Adam’s kids know how to change a tire or jump a car? It’s hilarious when people our age complain about “kids these days”. Didn’t we raise them?
Great interview. I'm not at all surprised that 30 year old Sarah is not in Adam's demographic.
Anyone under age 45 would be totally baffled by his constant 1970's-1980's pop culture references, especially television, movies and music. Adam's encyclopedic knowledge of the Love Boat and Battle of the Network Stars likely won't resonate with younger folks.
What exactly was Adam's point about the car repair? Knowing how to change a tire or boost a battery is what makes a man? Sorry, but that's idiotic. Is it also important for a man to know how to make a fire using only sticks? Or skin a deer? Do women need to know how to sew? People need to know the skills that relate to the responsibilities they are relied on for in the era they live.
I get that there are things that can reasonably be considered to be masculine traits, but being into cars is not one of them.
You have to admit that his implication that if necessary, you should be willing and able to get into a brainless fistfight in traffic provides food for thought.
I’m sorry, the idea that car knowledge isn’t coded as masculine is laughable.
I get your point that men and women would both be well served to know the basics and I agree. However, as someone who does this for a living, I can count on one hand(and don’t need any fingers on that hand) the number of female technicians/mechanics I’ve seen in the field. I know they’re out there and that they exist, but I’ve been doing this for a while and have never worked with or seen one in the buildings I frequent. That alone is a really good indicator as to how heavily male-dominated the mechanical repair industries are. What he said is not by any means a stretch.
Of course you're right that car knowledge is coded as masculine. But that doesn't mean that if you don't have that car knowledge, you're "less of" a man. That's what he is implying when he's mocking someone for not having that knowledge. Hunting is also coded as masculine. But would anyone think it's reasonable to think someone is less of a man if they don't hunt?
Your point is well made.
I still think his point was accurate in that the breadth of baseline knowledge about cars or hunting or construction or any other example that you can pull out of a hat was much higher and more commonplace in the past.
Any current conversation about man-cards being revoked will lead to the same rabbit hole. The standards have shifted slightly for today’s society, but that’s partially his point.
I would agree with Adam's assessment because clearly we all need to know how to change a tire or jump a car. Nobody needs to know how to skin a deer to survive. You might as well be saying, why learn to cook because we have Uber Eats? Where would the "modern conveniences make life better in all ways" argument logically end?
But we *don't* need to know how to change a tire or jump a car! We can easily call AAA or a mechanic or a buddy and have someone else do it for us just fine. Just like we have people who kill and prepare our meat, there are plenty of people who can perform this job the few times in our life it arises.
Plus, if it were indeed true that we all needed to know that, then why would it be a "man" thing to know? Why wouldn't women also need to know this skill?
Women should know it, too.
When I got a nail in a tire on my new car, I was surprised to find that there was no spare tire in the trunk, and I was told that the company stopped including them because it offers roadside service. I'm a tad skeptical of this. But I was going to struggle to change it without help.
For me, I know how to do enough things. A doctor ought to be able to pay someone else to make his car and his appliances and his technology work.
This very same thing happened to me just a few months ago. I was flabbergasted when I discovered there was no spare, just a Fix-a-Flat air compressor!
"...And that is a hose that is sucking backwards!" is a great line and I encourage the two of you to continue leveling accusations like this against each other in the future :)
Look forward to listening to this episode. Adam is a liberal. Or, as they them now, ‘conservative’
*call them now. Dang it
Louisville, Kentucky I would describe as quite feminine, and generally one of the most social justice-y places outside of the West Coast.
It's also one of the most BLM cities in the country; there is a famous mural to Breonna Taylor and there's a whole story about how a BLM activist tried to shoot a mayoral candidate, the local BLM chapter bailed him out for $100,000 and gave a snarky social media response to the notion that firing a glock at a political candidate was a bad thing.
But on the feminine side, I would agree that horse culture is quite feminized, and all the classic pinstripe suits and effete accents don't exactly seem like "traditional masculinity". West Virginia and Ohio exude a way more masculine vibe than Kentucky in general, with apologies to Wilfried Reilly.
Came here to comment that. We visited Louisville for vacation last year and it was unrecognizable from the rest of Ohuckiana where I grew up. Food and drink were great though, but pride progress flags everywhere
Louisville does have a nice and diversified food scene. Very hipster.
This was fun! Meghan and Adam should date.
That's funny! I think Adam is dating Crystal Denha. Besides, we'd never get along because I like to bring my dog to restaurants.
That’ll be over in 5 minutes. I don’t think he’d mind the dog in the restaurant as much if he’s well behaved - he takes Phil E Cheesesteak to work - it’s the airplane that’s the problem. Oh now that I think about it he has that whole hygiene thing…
Never mind 😊 I’ve got to stop daydreaming on conference calls!
Great episode!
Haha. I think the Aceman would have a hard time with modern dance, theater, book readings, classical music and other high culture activities that I imagine Meghan being really into. This is a guy who has "football Sunday with Kimmel and some other dudes" etched in stone in his calendar.
And they both like big dogs…
Ah yes but don’t you think Meghan also seems like the independent sort who’d like to have a lot of her own space and would appreciate having separate interests?
Good point. I seem to vaguely recall Meghan noting that her ideal relationship would be a long-distance one where she gets to carefully curate the amount of time spent with her paramour.
Exactly! So they go on long walks with their dogs together and go house shopping every weekend. Meghan we know loves real estate and so does Adam. AND he can tell her what’s wrong structurally and decoratively while they pretend to shop and make fun of bad remodel jobs together… at least until they find two nice places just next door to each other. I really have given this some thought 😜
I believe people on the interwebz call this "shipping" where fans imagine elaborate scenarios in which two celebrities or fictional tv characters are in a dream relationship. I had forgotten about the real estate angle - good one.
Oh yes I’ve heard of that. This is my very first ship! I usually don’t give a… ship about celebrities. I’ll make an exception for CarDaum? Adaghan? Daumrolla?
The next time I need to explain to a younger friend how we talked in the 80’s, I’ll just play this episode and let them drink in Adam Carolla.
Prostate examination is not effective in actually detecting prostate cancer when used as a screening test; the research on it is unfavorable and it is not generally recommended (e.g. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29531107/). At this point, it is more of a med student hazing ritual, although someone might argue it has some limited uses outside of screening.
Screening colonoscopies are more contested; the research findings are not that great but it's still widely done in the U.S. There's also a movement to go to stool testing and to do colonoscopies only if the initial test is positive. It's unclear if any of these approaches actually save lives. This is a big Vinay Prasad hobby horse.
Boy is my husband going to love you. I was just busting his chops about scheduling his.
This is a more ambiguous subject. Part of the issue is that even when people come in with symptomatic colon cancer it is one of the more treatable cancers. Part of the issue is that the DNA stool testing is quite good and if your cologuard is negative there isn't really any reason to get a colonoscopy. Part of the issue is that colonoscopy is not a risk-free intervention.
This is the big study that came out of Europe last year, which found a very slight reduction in cancer occurrence but no reduction in mortality (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36214590/). There are some other big clinical trials ongoing.
I didn't say that any individual shouldn't do it, but it certainly isn't a slam dunk. The only medical procedures for cancer prevention that I would say are unequivocally beneficial are pap smears and removing skin lesions. Lifestyle is far more important. And unlike most of the stuff we talk about here, this actually is my specialty.
Thanks for the info!
At my last checkup, my doctor informed me that according to the latest findings, in the absence of actual symptoms, the prostate exam as we've known it is useless, and we can go by the PSA. He may have raised an index finger for emphasis. "So," he said, "I'm willing to forego this procedure if you are." I agreed that we should follow the science. This isn't the dark ages, after all.
PSA is also not particularly useful; the USPSTF rates it as a C, which is basically the body that decides what preventive services to recommend in the U.S. saying "eh".
Cancer screening sounds good, but in reality it is very hard to catch cancer by screening healthy people and significant amounts of harm are done by putting people through unnecessary procedures and unnecessary stress when there are false positive results.
That's what I get for being proud of my low PSA, I guess.
A normal PSA level is good, but a high PSA can be caused by all sorts of problems so it doesn't really mean that you have cancer. And the follow-up testing is expensive and invasive and arguably not worth it.
This was supposed to be a reply to Erica Etelson below.
I've never seen any breakdowns by sex, but I strongly suspect that the men in this situation greatly outnumber the women.
Keep in mind that women are greatly outpacing men in college enrollment (current trends suggest US colleges could be 65-70 percent female in a couple decades - hat tip to Richard Reeves).
Due to this college gap, there could be two results:
1. More young women get jobs that allow them to live on their own.
2 Even if women graduate college and don't have "good" jobs, those who went away are used to communal living and are more likely to take on roommate to share expenses. My own anecdata suggests that people who never had the experience of residential college are wary of living with roommates so will stay with parents longer
I looked up the David Allen Grier quote and listened to the clip that was played on Coralla’s show and it seems all that DAG said was Adam was a “right wing troll” and he “couldn’t do it anymore” --as in appearing on his show. There were no mentions of white supremacy or calling Adam a racist.
So it might be that Corolla is hearing what he wants to hear.
My boys are under 30 and they live on their own in an apartment they pay for. They still come home almost every weekend. They are 20 and 23. The younger has a girlfriend. The older has a full time job. There is still some isolation and homesickness. They don’t have a social life in the city where they are living. It’s a different world where they get all of their entertainment on the phone and I think when the weekend arrives instead of going out and talking to people they come home where it’s familiar. I’m not sure how to advise them or if I can even help apart from saying stop coming home which is hard to do.
Do you want them to stop coming home?
No. I always want them to come home if they want. They are always welcome and I love being with them.
I just worry because I want them to get out a little bit more but I’m likely worrying for nothing.
Why isn't the younger one spending his weekends with his girlfriend? Does he bring her?
Most problems can be solved by picking up hobbies and interests. Social media and TV should not be relied upon for entertainment.
Girlfriend lives in our town and she often returns on the weekends to her parent’s house. They spend nearly every day together. They attend college in a city that’s about an hour or so away.
I agree about social media and the phone. They aren’t interested in social media and don’t post. They do use Instagram messenger to communicate with their friends. They have their hobbies-- they are into fitness and weightlifting and rock climbing at a rock climbing gym. They don’t watch TV apart from sports. I still worry a bit because there is a contrast between when I was their age -- I had a lot more friends and social activities and I wasn’t home on weekends that often. It’s different with kids now. They are alone (and mostly content it seems) in their bubbles.
They sound quite healthy and well rounded. Maybe friend groups are just smaller these days?
Sounds like you raised independent young men with good family values.. And I agree that's quite different to how my early 20s were, but seems common for today. I don't have kids that age (or at all) but I understand why you feel concerned.
Are the majority of women under the age of 30 living with their parents too? Re: young men living with parents, are the majority just out of high school or college? Does it taper of signifantly as they approach 30? I sure hope so.
First!!!!!!!
Damnit!
It’d be interesting to make a diagram with expected skills or skill sets for the two sexes over time. Changing a tire is definitely on its way out with fix-a-flat compressed air goop cans and “drive while flat” tires…but it’s always more attractive (regardless of your sex) and convenient to be able to DO THINGS rather than be ignorant/incompetent.
The fighting bit shows Adam’s age. He doesn’t realize how many people are carrying concealed these days—the time of public macho confrontation is over. You are likely to get shot if you get out your car and shove someone.
As a 50 year-old man, my wife expects me to be able to do “man stuff”—build/remodel our house, basic car stuff, cut down trees, back a trailer, hunt (yes, skin and quarter a deer), confront a burglar, etc. And while she would be embarrassed for me to get into a stupid physical confrontation with a stranger, she would be appalled if I was not prepared for violence if it was necessary to protect her and/or our kids.
If I fail to pass on these skills to my kids (son and daughter) isn’t that on me? I wonder if Adam’s kids know how to change a tire or jump a car? It’s hilarious when people our age complain about “kids these days”. Didn’t we raise them?
Great episode! Adam is a fantastic guest.
15th!
The questions about comedy reminded me that Kat Timpf would be a good guest for you two.
Great interview. I'm not at all surprised that 30 year old Sarah is not in Adam's demographic.
Anyone under age 45 would be totally baffled by his constant 1970's-1980's pop culture references, especially television, movies and music. Adam's encyclopedic knowledge of the Love Boat and Battle of the Network Stars likely won't resonate with younger folks.
The old Lovelines are still pretty entertaining. You can probably dig up highlights, but there are a lot of full episodes up on Youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/@TheLoveBetweenTheTwoHosts/videos
Love it.