Adam Ruins Gambling

Weddings. Cars. Food drives. Sex. Dogs. Yes, if it’s a thing you like, Adam Conover has likely ruined it.

Guarantees in life: Death, Taxes and Adam Silver doing awesome things. Is that gambling can be a HORRIBLE addiction/disease for people — to the point it single-handily ruins lives. Beverly and Adam team up to do a mother-son cooking show on public access television; when Barry ruins the one college letter of recommendation he is able to get, Murray must step in to help.

The comedian’s now signature approach of 'take a commonly regarded good thing or popular truth ... and entertainingly and informatively pummel it into the dirt with facts and reality' originally grew up on the popular comedy site CollegeHumor with a funny series of smartly crafted, smartly dressed and smartly researched video vignettes. And in a pleasantly surprising turn, people loved the awful truth so much, Conover’s videos grew into their own television show (appropriately titled 'Adam Ruins Everything' on TruTV) and now a stand-up comedy tour, bringing endearing ruin to cities across the nation – including Milwaukee’s Turner Hall on Sunday, Oct. 2.

But is Conover really ruining anything? We chatted with the comedian and television star before Sunday’s show, and during our (gratefully not sabotaged) conversation, he talked about why his approach is more appreciation than destruction, if there’s any topic off-limits and his delightfully ruinous plans for Milwaukee.

OnMilwaukee: As one who grew up through high school watching it religiously, I must ask: What was it like working at CollegeHumor? Judging by the videos, it seemed like the coolest place on Earth. Was that how it was in reality?

Adam Conover: (laughs) CollegeHumor definitely, especially in the early days, had this image of the coolest, chillest place to work. It really was a dream job as a comedy writer, because I could do whatever I wanted. As a comedy writer, I was really encouraged just to follow what you found funny. Not everything gets made, but you don’t have to sort of make schlock. It really was decided by what the six people in the writers room found the funniest. But we got to be in them, and it was really a wonderful place to do comedy and find your voice. And after a couple of years working there, we moved out to L.A. to try and make TV shows – and we got lucky and made one. I couldn’t be happier about it.

Where did the idea for 'Adam Ruins Everything' come from?

Well, I’ve always been an information sponge in my regular life. The kind of stuff I talk about in my show is the kind of stuff that I like to know in my real life. It’s just sort of been my hobby to read magazine articles and listen to podcasts – in my car, instead of listening to music, I listen to audiobooks and podcasts and things like that – that’s just always been how I am. So I started trying to put that together with the comedy that I did.

I first did it as a stand-up comic. I did the diamond rings bit in stand-up, and I noticed that it not only made people laugh, it made people perk up and think and come up to me afterwards and go, 'Oh my god; is that actually true? That’s crazy!'

So then we did it as a CollegeHumor sketch, and what I did for the sketch was I was worried about – look, I’ve always gotten this reaction when I talk about this stuff in person of 'Oh my god, shut up; you’re annoying.' So I was worried about the writers having that reaction, so I just wrote them into the script having that reaction in order to get ahead of them. They couldn’t make fun of me in the writers room because I had just written it into the script for our read-through of them having the same reaction. And that ended up being the comedy engine of the whole series.

What’s the topic that’s gotten you the most outrage, between the CollegeHumor videos and the TV show?

So far it’s only a web video, but we’re doing it again on the TV show this year: the one about purebred dog breeding. You’d be surprised at about how many people got so angry based on that, because people who are in the dog-breeding world or dog world are so committed to their breeds, they’re pretty fanatical about it. So that was the one I got the most people tweeting at me, 'You don’t know what you’re talking about,' and 'Any reputable breeder wouldn’t allow these kind of genetic defects to happen.'

But the fact is – and we talk about it in the episode – that purebred dog breeding, because it restricts the gene pool, it necessarily leads to genetic disease. There’s no whittling out genetic disease; it’s always going to pop up again. So those people, when they do that, they’re mitigating the problem they caused by pure-breeding the dogs in the first place.

But people really don’t want to see that. They really don’t want to confront it, because they love breeds and the variety of dogs so much. And that’s a really hard one to get away from. I think even in my daily life, it’s hard not to think of dogs in terms of dog breeds, even though I know from my research that dog breeds are things that people made up that don’t really correspond to anything in nature and that the definitions have shifted over time and the existence of the concept at all is harmful to dogs.

Is there a topic that you refuse to do, that you don’t want to ruin for yourself?

No, not at all. There definitely isn’t. One of the things that’s most dear to me is video games. I love video games so much – especially when I’m working really hard on a show; that’s the main way I retreat and wind down. But we did an episode on video games. There’s nothing that’s off limits.

The pleasure of learning this stuff is my greatest pleasure in life, so I would never hold back from anything. And frankly, the thesis of the show is that it’s always better to know more, that whatever the topic is, your pleasure in it is deepened by knowing more. Any sports fan knows this: The more you know about your sport, the more fun it is – even if you know the unsavory stuff. It’s true of everything in life. Even though, superficially, it’s presented on the show as 'ruining' and puncturing people’s bubble and upsetting them, at the end, we try to show why you’re always better off for knowing.

What are your plans for the show in Milwaukee? Are there any specific local things you’ll 'ruin'?

What I’m really excited about is that I am a stand-up comic, so, for me, when you’re making a TV show, you’re kind of like, 'This means I get to tour, right?' It’s almost like touring is the prize at the end of making the show. That’s why you do it: so you can go do some awesome tour shows.

What we’re going to do is bring the flavor of 'Adam Ruins Everything' to the live stage. I’m going to be touring with this giant video screen, and I’m going to be projecting stats, facts, images, punchlines, original video. So it’s going to be like a really fast-moving, entertaining comedy TED Talk all about our nation’s election history: the history of our democracy, brief presidential facts, stuff like that. So I hope people leave with a 180-degree different view of what our nation’s democracy is.

Adam Ruins Everything Gambling

As for Milwaukee specifically, I’ve never been to Milwaukee before, so I’m really excited to just check out the city. I’ve heard amazing things about it. It seems like the unsung hero among American cities.