200 words about The Adam Friedland Show

All Adam Friedland used to get was shit on. His previous podcast, the name of which cannot be printed in a family Substack, was a subhuman cesspool predicated on the appeal of listening to Friedland get dunked on. One of the nicer things the show’s fans called him was “gay bug.” So it was a surprise when that podcast ended and its successor centered on him. The even bigger surprise: it’s incredible, one of the best of the many interview shows that have supplanted the glossy Condé Nast profile as the primary way celebrities attempt to appear human in 2025. Friedland’s disarming style — sometimes ingratiating, others lazily antagonistic, all eerily well-researched — seems calibrated to serve as an x-ray on his subjects, stress-testing their chillness. SJP passes. Dave Portnoy fails. The curation is erratic, online: a Nelkboy one week, NBA vet the next. A recent article called him “the millennial Jon Stewart,” but he’s more on track to be the next Oprah (complimentary), or maybe pre-cancellation Charlie Rose, building some immediate, cosmic rapport with whoever sits across from him. G Herbo is now the second rapper to tell him he looks like Jeff Goldblum. Gay bug won.