PodCast Review: The Adam Carolla Show

Carolla Carolla Carolla, don’t type Carrolla or Carrola…

I’ve been a fan of Adam Carolla for a while now — probably over twenty years. I first remember him on the MTV version of Loveline, where he and Dr. Drew fielded questions on relationships and sexual health, and I always thought he was a pretty funny guy. Now, what I didn’t know is that the man has worked nearly every sort of job and continues to work a multitude of them in order to find success. He currently oversees several podcasts and the Adam Carolla Show (ACS here on out) is the flagship for his brand.

ACS is the natural replacement after years of butting heads with the people in charge of morning radio, where Adam worked quite successfully for a lot of years. He’s assembled a team of people to work on the show, he has a studio for recording it, and it is generally one of the most popular podcasts out there — definitely the most popular one in the morning radio format.

I listen to ACS almost every weekday and if I don’t I tend to try catching up as soon as I can. It’s an entertaining show with a nice mix-up of guests and segments, including a few games they play, including the two most frequent games:

– The Rotten Tomatoes Game, which I try playing along with, involves guessing the critic score of a movie. The difference between your guess and the number is your “score” (a spot-on guess is a 5 point deduction), and the lowest score wins.

– Totally Topical Tivo Trivia, where they read the description of a movie without names and the cast try to guess the film.

They also often have on celebrity guests, usually someone involved in comedy in some fashion. Dennis Miller, Dana Gould (which usually means a hilarious Huell’s Jewels segment), and Larry Miller are all frequent guests. There are many more, and a great guest can really make everyone bring their A-game comedy wise. They also interview non-comedy folks — sports figures, political figures, and so on.

The format is pretty set, unless there’s a lengthy on on one rant: They open with the crew and potentially a first guest, and they talk about something kind of random (often Carolla ranting about something in his day to day life, or people in general), and then move into the game or interview portion of the show. The last two segments of each show tend to be the News, in which they discuss a few news stories and often involve Carolla descending into a rant, and Good Sports with Dave Dameshek. Though they barely spend any time on sports…

If you don’t like Carolla, you probably won’t care for a show in which he is the feature act. But then again, if you don’t like him I’m not sure why you’d read this far into a review of his primary podcast. I enjoy his schtick, and the way he goes about ranting, so this is one of my favorite listens, especially among non-fiction podcasts. And even when I don’t agree with him at least I feel like he’s come to his point of view honestly.