Factually! with Adam Conover

While we think of automobiles as an integral part of American life, the fact is that they’re just objectively a bad form of transportation. They’re costly, they don’t scale well, and they’re a leading cause of death in the country. The oil and automobile lobbies have done a lot of work to make it feel like there’s no way we could live without cars, but the fact remains that it’s very possible to t...

Benny Feldman is one of the funniest new comics working today. He also has Tourette Syndrome, a neurological condition characterized by involuntary vocalizations and tics. Not only does this give Benny a unique rhythm to his performances, it also has helped him develop a fascinating personal understanding of how humor even works. This week, Adam talks with Benny about Tourette’s, comedy, and the p...

The internet is getting shittier. Hell, the whole world is getting shittier. The thing is, it’s no accident—it’s by design. The tech giants who run the internet have figured out how to make bank off of making our everyday experience with the internet worse, and this process is bleeding over into the physical world. This process is called “enshittification”, a term coined by the massively influenti...

Trump despises the average worker and has spent the past several months doing everything he can to demolish the labor protections that Americans of previous generations fought and died to win. We’re at an inflection point for the future of American labor, with our very livelihoods in the balance. Julie Su has been a civil rights attorney, California’s Labor Commissioner, and then acting Secretary...

A.I. slop is competing for space all across the web, and it’s starting to edge out actual human creators. The internet, once rife with possibility, is rapidly turning into a depressing wasteland of mind numbing garbage. Despite the massive volume of brain-waste being sludged out every day, there are still some brilliant human minds trying to turn the tides of the battle. 404media is a worker-owned...

Comedy has changed as an art form. On top of social media fundamentally reconfiguring the expectations of the audience for what the role of a comedian is meant to be, we live in deeply unfunny times. Despite these challenges, we still all need to laugh. This week, Adam talks with comedian Gianmarco Soresi about how to adapt to the times without compromising integrity. -- SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREO...

(In addition to your weekly Factually! episode, this week we're bringing you a monologue from Adam. This short, researched monologue originally aired on the Factually! YouTube page, but we are sharing audio versions of these monologues with our podcast audience as well. Please enjoy, and stay tuned for your regularly scheduled episode of Factually!) Our future is also a blind box. Visit USAFacts.o...

The Palestinian people are being killed en masse, they are being starved, and many are dying of preventable disease. More and more people are beginning to understand that it’s Israel’s intention to eliminate the entire Palestinian population of Gaza. Yet as untold thousands are dying, there are still people who insist that this is not “genocide” despite every bit of evidence to the contrary. This...

Being in “good shape” doesn’t just mean changing your diet in pursuit of unrealistic standards of thinness; it means challenging your body to be more capable today than it was yesterday. In recent years, weight lifting has been catching on as a primary exercise focus for both men and women who are trying to live healthier lifestyles. This week, Adam sits with Casey Johnston, author of A Physical E...

The world is getting less funny. Not just out there in the geopolitical hellscape of every day life, but at the movie theater as well. While comedy films once dominated the box office, in recent years there’s been a sharp drop-off in theatrical comedies. The communal experience of sitting in a room with people and sharing one of the most fundamental human emotions has quietly evaporated, and been...

One of Elon Musk’s most insightful critics is his own daughter. Vivian Wilson came into the limelight last year after her father deadnamed her in an interview with Jordan Peterson, and she responded by systematically dismantling Musk in a now infamous post. Having publicly rejected her father, Wilson suddenly found herself as an icon of trans visibility in America—something she had never expected....

Pyramid schemes have been a comedic punchline for ages now, but they’ve never been more relevant. Not only is there still a thriving culture of multi-level exploitation in this country, but the dark spirit of pyramid schemes has wormed its way into countless aspects of American life. This week, Adam speaks with Bridget Read, writer at New York Magazine and the author of Little Bosses Everywhere: H...

While we’re certainly in a uniquely bad time for our capitalist society, we’re definitely not the first people to be having the thought, “what if things weren’t quite so terrible for 99% of people?” From the beginning, capitalism has justifiably had critics. Today Adam is joined by John Cassidy, New Yorker writer and author of Capitalism and Its Critics: A History: From the Industrial Revolution t...

(In addition to your weekly Factually! episode, this week we're bringing you a monologue from Adam. This short, researched monologue originally aired on the Factually! YouTube page, but we are sharing audio versions of these monologues with our podcast audience as well. Please enjoy, and stay tuned for your regularly scheduled episode of Factually!) Zohran Mamdani is writing a new blueprint for th...

It’s no secret that Spotify pays artists extremely poorly, but it turns out they don’t treat their customers much better. Author and journalist Liz Pelly’s new book, Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist, investigates how Spotify has accelerated the collapse of the music industry, along with their shady practices such as filling playlists with stock music—fooling...

(In addition to your weekly Factually! episode, this week we're bringing you a monologue from Adam. This short, researched monologue originally aired on the Factually! YouTube page, but we are sharing audio versions of these monologues with our podcast audience as well. Please enjoy, and stay tuned for your regularly scheduled episode of Factually!) ICE is being turned into an army, and everyone w...

Companies are infamous for their union busting tactics, but that doesn’t mean union organizers don’t have their own strategies. This week, Adam speaks with Jaz Brisack, an undercover organizer, or union “salt”, who took a job as a barista in a Starbucks in Buffalo, NY with the explicit intention of organizing Starbucks employees. Thanks to the effort of Jaz and other organizers, around 550 Starbuc...

(In addition to your weekly Factually! episode, this week we're bringing you a monologue from Adam. This short, researched monologue originally aired on the Factually! YouTube page, but we are sharing audio versions of these monologues with our podcast audience as well. Please enjoy, and stay tuned for your regularly scheduled episode of Factually!) The right is trying to turn Pride Month into Sha...

Until recently, Lina Khan was the chair of the Federal Trade Commission. Under her leadership, the FTC went after the anti-competitive tactics of tech giants, finalized rules to ban non-compete clauses, enforced the right to repair, and even took on ever-loathsome junk fees. Despite the limit resources of her department, Chair Khan made such undeniable strides in improving the lives of everyday Am...

When it comes to medical science, there’s never been a better time to be alive than now… other than maybe a few months ago before the new Trump administration. Americans today are living longer than ever before, and that’s owed in no small part to the National Institutes of Health—a government organization that has been responsible for some of the most significant biomedical advancements in t...

Last week, Zohran Mamdani shattered the notion that a New York City mayor has to be some craggy-faced, man-shaped stack of disappointments who’d sooner die than be seen on the subway. The young, energetic Democratic Socialist ran on a platform of making New York City a more livable place for average residents, which—surprise!—went over well with average residents. Listening to constituents and try...

(In addition to your weekly Factually! episode, this week we're bringing you a monologue from Adam. This short, researched monologue originally aired on the Factually! YouTube page, but we are sharing audio versions of these monologues with our podcast audience as well. Please enjoy, and stay tuned for your regularly scheduled episode of Factually!) We have the numbers to prove it, AI is turning o...

Trump has long expressed racism and vitriol toward immigrants, particularly those from Latin America. As he deploys the National Guard to Los Angeles to quash pro-immigrant protesters, it’s important to remember that Latin America is still part of the Americas. To understand how we arrived at a moment where the right holds such a bitter and hateful view of our neighbors to the south, we need to lo...

At the No Kings protests this past weekend, millions of Americans demonstrated against the fascist right wing. Despite the staggering number of people willing to take to the streets, why does it still seem like the left is powerless to stop the right on a political level? This week, Adam sits with NYU professor Vivek Chibber to discuss how America is really a country of two right wing political pa...

In the past several years, the tabletop roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons has firmly made the leap from subculture to pop culture. Massively popular “actual play” shows like Dimension 20 now sell out arenas like Madison Square Garden, a feat which would have been unheard of not so long ago. This week, Adam speaks with Dimension 20 creator and game master Brennan Lee Mulligan about the strato...