My guest today is comedian Adam Conover, whose new stand-up special, Big Divorce Energy, is now available to stream.
Conover first came to widespread prominence with the TV show Adam Ruins Everything, in which he played a lightly fictionalized comedic version of himself, who was a nerdy, pedantic know-it-all. In each episode, Conover tackled a different weighty topic, debunking misperceptions and urban myths, bursting bubbles, and trying to cut through the noise to give viewers a grounded take.
Adam Ruins Everything ran between 2015 and 2019, and after its conclusion, Conover continued to ply his trade as the foremost comedy educator with The G Word, a Netflix show about government made for the Obamas’ Higher Ground production company, which aired in 2022.
This present moment is an interesting one for Conover, due to the recent dissolution of his 15-year-relationship with writer and cartoonist Lisa Hanawalt, best known for creating the Netflix animated series Tuca and Bertie, and for her work as a producer on BoJack Horseman.
Although Conover and Hanawalt were never married, the title Big Divorce Energy pretty accurately sums up the place Conover is at right now. In the special, he’s clearly looking for something, trying to shatter the old Adam, throwing things at the wall, sometimes actively courting the audience’s discomfort as he discusses being a single man nearing middle age who’s now opening up his life to explore kinks, queerness, polyamory, pegging and porn.
While Conover can’t fully shed the persnickety Adam persona in Big Divorce Energy, what’s charming is the messiness he embraces as he acknowledges that some stuff in life is not neat or clear cut, and that some questions don’t have an answer at all.
In a frankly very opinionated conversation recorded in the lead-up to the release of the special, Conover talked to me about a bunch of stuff, including: why his sex dreams do not cut the mustard, the bizarre way he once accidentally stole a sketch idea, his take on why epiphanies are overrated, why emails get in the way of him living his dreams, plus he takes potshots at micro-dosing, men who wear suits and sneakers and the pop science of decision fatigue.
Conover’s new comedy special, Big Divorce Energy, is out now – go check it out!
This episode was produced by Myron Kaplan and our new theme music is “Partly Cloudy Days” by Oscar Louis.
Oscar Louis’s band Nowhere Else to Be has their debut album dropping December 4 – go follow them now!
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Next week on Nobody’s Ever Asked Me That, my guest is actress Ruth Madeley …
