Adam Ruins Everything's Adam Conover on Skepticism, the TSA, and Cultural Myths in the Information Age

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Adam Ruins Everything's Adam Conover on Skepticism, the TSA, and Cultural Myths in the Information Age

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"I want to do stories that are about the bits of cultural furniture that are sitting there that we're like, 'Oh yeah, that's been there for years! What could possibly be weird about it?' And then we're going to lift that piece of furniture and look at all the bugs scurry away," says Adam Conover, host Adam Ruins Everything.

Adam Ruins Everything started as a web series for College Humor. As the eponymous host of the show, Conover "ruins" widely held beliefs that just so happen to be wrong. His targets have ranged from the TSA, to forensic science, to engagement rings, to car dealerships. TruTV picked up the series, which is still airing its first season on Tuesday nights, and expanded it into its current half hour format.

Reason TV's Zach Weissmueller sat down with Conover to discuss his approach to debunking, why he believes there's a market for skeptical inquiry, what other shows influenced him, and why false cultural beliefs persist in the age of nearly unlimited access to information.

"You can't escape culture," says Conover. "You can learn about it. You can criticize it. You can try to move it slowly. But at the end of the day, you can't actually opt out of the culture that you're in."

Approximately 10 minutes. Shot by Meredith Bragg and Anthony Fisher. Music by Ant Neely. Additional footage provided by College Humor and TruTV.

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Comments

[Tommy_Grand]

I caught an episode of his show & my 1st thought was: "I bet he likes Reason."

[Mainer2]

I've watched a few episodes. Any reasonoid will be familiar with the issues he addresses, like forensic "science". It's a good show for the unaware. Too bad Adam is a douchey smug hipster.

[Undercover Libertarian]

Yeah, but many of his pieces are abysmal on facts, shows real lack of understanding economics, and the few good ones he has had are rip off of other peoples pieces like Penn & Teller.
I waqsn't a fan from when he started on College Humor as he in his first one promoted some debunked myths as facts, and his second one was abysmal on scientific knowledge. And most of his ones since then haven't been much better unless they're the rip off ones.
I wouldn't promote him on Reason, he does far more harm than good. Maybe he he tried to actually be accurate or not rip off others pieces then it might be worthy, but in this stage it's garbage

[MokFarin]

I've watched a few shows of the TV show. While the facts aren't 100% correct, they are "correct enough" to at least get people thinking with a little bit of goofy entertainment (with much better production than his web shorts).

Of course, if people continue thinking and seek out the truth of a lot of things, life would be better all around. This won't get us there, but every little bit helps, ey?

[Sevo]

Unless it gives the statists reason to claim 'see? He was wrong there! He must be wrong here, too!'

[doingprettygood]

His understanding of economics IS pretty bad. In his episode where he explains why Tom's shoes doesn't actually do that much good (which other than this part is a good episode) he says that providing cheap shoes to African countries disrupts the local shoe market. This is the sort of protectionist argument you'd expect from someone with no understanding of economics, which seems like a fair description. Still, bad economics aside, it's still a pretty good show. He does run contrary to some left-wing tropes, which I always appreciate.

[misthiocracy]

Minor Quibble: Not "cheap" shoes, but rather "free" shoes.

[halmonkey]

I love nothing more than a good debunking, but uh, c'mon, seriously? I guess I'll need to watch the show first to form an opinion, but this video right here makes me think it's crap. Penn & Teller's Bullshit is fantastic and Mythbusters is also good. But what this douchey smug hipster seems to be presenting looks like nothing more than a lame comedian trying to debunk personal preferences.

[Eye8apie]

I enjoy his show, but I do worry that he gets his "facts" sometimes from sources that have a political slant. Also his show on restaurants questioned tipping and said servers that work in restaurants that had a no tipping policy preferred making more an hour than tips. I highly doubt that. No server or bartender making $100.00 + cash per shift would trade that for hourly minus taxes.

[Satyrical]

The problem with tips is theyre inconsistent, which makes it much more difficult to plan a budget. And people will stiff you all the time, which ends up making you feel like you just worked for free.

[GroundTruth]

Having caught about 10 minutes of one episode, I couldn't figure out what he was trying to do. Part of it might have been simply the way the camera moves, but it came across as a third rate Stossel, but without so much edge.

[misthiocracy]

Adam Conover regularly advocates BANNING private voluntary behavior, like the time he advocated the idea that automobiles should have been banned in the 1920s, or this videa where he advocated that tipping in restaurants should be banned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_vivC7c_1k

He's the worst kind of "internet skeptic", where he's "skeptical" about the things he happens to dislike but wholly unskeptical about the things he does happen to like.

[Akira]

Adam Conover? Shit, I watched him when he was in the Olde English sketch comedy group... This must have been way back in 2005 or so. I pretty much forgot he existed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaS-C_qb7Ag